Not a minute after she arrived, Haley saw Reid enter James’s office building. A few minutes after that, the skinny, short-haired woman from the other night went in.
Haley was trying to make her drink last when she saw Reid exit the building. She caught only a glimpse, but he looked angry. About a half hour after that, the woman left. In sharp contrast to Reid, she had a self-satisfied smile on her face.
“Another round, miss?” the bartender asked.
“Yes, please.” She smiled at him. “It looks like I’m gonna be here awhile.”
Wayne was uneasy. He tried to calm himself, but he knew that was a losing proposition. Even a couple of beers had done nothing to ease his nerves.
Owen arrived exactly when the pizza did. At dinner, he barely said a word, no matter how Wayne tried to engage him. Wayne knew it was because of what awaited his son tomorrow at Sloan Kettering, a final determination as to whether he’d be admitted into the protocol. Other kids his son’s age were worried about their college acceptances, whereas Owen was waiting to hear whether he would live or die.
“Can you text me as soon as you hear?” Wayne asked. “I wanted to be there tomorrow, but we have this mandatory faculty thing. I tried to get out of it, but—”
“It’s fine. Yeah, I’ll text you as soon as I know.”
“And not like you texted me as soon as you got on the subway tonight, right?”
Owen offered a sheepish smile. “No. I’ll actually do it tomorrow. I promise.”
Wayne began clearing the table, but when he reached Owen’s seat, rather than grab his son’s plate, he placed his hand on Owen’s shoulder.
“I love you, Owen. I’m so proud that you’re my son.”
Wayne had said such things countless times to Owen in the past. He assumed that such expressions of affection were like white noise to a teenager. Owen certainly never reciprocated the sentiment, but Wayne didn’t care about that. He wanted his son to know that he was loved and valued, something Archibald Fiske had never thought important to convey to Wayne.
Owen averted his eyes, his usual reaction to any effort at intimacy. He looked, if anything, embarrassed rather than loved. Still, Wayne was glad to have said it. He wanted his son to know that he would do anything for him.
PART THREE
10
Haley awoke momentarily confused. It was still dark outside, and even though she could not see a foot in front of her, she knew she was in a foreign place. Then she saw Malik’s chiseled bicep above the blanket, and it all came rushing back.
Little more than twelve hours earlier, she had been at Sant Ambroeus, sitting at the bar. She got there at four, and although she hadn’t checked the time, she assumed it was hardly past five when she went inside James’s office. She’d fled like a bat out of hell no more than five minutes later.
Her plan thereafter had been simple: go to Malik’s apartment, immediately get him into bed, and when they were done, try to confuse him about what time she had arrived. Her hope was that after enough carnal activity, he would believe she’d shown up an hour earlier than she actually had, and therefore would later tell the police that she’d been with him from five o’clock until morning.
Malik worked what he called “freelance.” She thought that was a euphemism for not too often. He did something computer-related but was never too descriptive about how he spent his days, and she’d never had any reason to care. She did have a reason last evening, of course. If he hadn’t been home or was on his way to work, her entire plan would’ve been shot to hell.
She’d assumed Malik’s walk-up building north of the Grand Concourse in the Bronx had limited security, but she didn’t take any chances. She’d pulled her hood over her head and kept her face down. Then she’d pressed the buzzer and uttered a silent prayer that he answered.
It took longer than she imagined it should for Malik to cross what she knew to be a small apartment. But she eventually heard his voice coming through the intercom.
“Who is it?”
“It’s Haley. Can I come up?”
“What you doing here, girl?”
“Wouldn’t you rather me show you than tell you?”
As she had expected, getting Malik to drop what he was doing to have sex with her had not been difficult. After, he’d fallen right to sleep. When he awoke an hour later and asked what time it was, Haley answered quickly: “Time to go again.”
That ended the conversation for the next hour. Malik’s slumber the second time was marked by the deep guttural sound of his snoring, which signaled that he was down for the count.
Sleep was to be only intermittent for Haley, however. Every time she shut her eyes in hopes that darkness would erase her thoughts, she was brought back to the images she feared she’d never shake.
In an hour, it would be sunrise. Haley wouldn’t be able to continue to hide in Malik’s apartment. The new day required that she go on with her life, as if she had no knowledge of what had transpired in James’s office last night.
Owen had an 8:30 a.m. appointment at Memorial Sloan Kettering.
He got there before eight and took a seat in the hospital waiting room, which was officially designated as the Clinical Cancer Trial Family and Friends Area. His mother arrived less than five minutes later.
“Looks like we’re both early worms,” she said.
“Birds,” he said.
“What?”
“Early birds. They’re the ones who catch the worms. Worms are always there, I think.”
She laughed. “Before caffeine, my brain doesn’t
