Twice

at its core. It makes a lot of promises, but in the end you pay for what it gives you with your soul.”

“That’s nice, Dax,” she said, not knowing quite how to respond to that.

A homeless man drifting up the street beside the Rover made her remember the tunnels that existed beneath the streets, made her think of the hole in the laundry room floor, and in turn of Ford McKirdy. She took her phone out of her purse and dialed his cell phone number.

“McKirdy,” he answered.

“It’s Lydia,” she said.

“Hey, Lydia. How are you? You scared the shit out of me the other day.”

“I’m okay,” she said quickly, not wanting to be reminded that she should really still be in bed. “Listen, Julian Ross gave me a call. I’m on my way to talk to her.”

“Good luck,” he said with a laugh.

“You’ve been to see her?”

“Yeah, she seemed lucid enough at first, but she’s fried,” he answered. “I got nothing from her.”

“What else has been happening? I’m a little behind,” she said. There was a slide show in her mind of the events in the days before she’d collapsed. She saw Maura Hodge smoking her pipe in her Gothic drawing room, the monster attacking Dax in the basement of the Ross house, Dr. Wetterau shining his penlight into her eyes and telling her about James Ross but not the whole story. A thought was starting to take form in her mind, but she couldn’t quite make out the shape.

“I’ve been trying to reach Jeff all day,” said Ford, sounding a little exasperated. “I hated to bother you guys, knowing what you’re going through. But I found something that makes me think you may have been on the right track after all.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

He told her about the nanny and his visit to the Sunnyvale Retirement Home.

“So who was she?”

“The name on her employment record was Annabelle Hodge. She’s from Haunted.”

Lydia heard blood rushing in her ears and her heart did a little flutter. She was transported back to that night over a hundred years ago when Annabelle Taylor watched her five children die before her eyes because of Elizabeth Ross’s cowardly heart. The vision was so vivid she smelled gunpowder.

“Annabelle Hodge. Who is she? Maura’s sister?”

“Her daughter. Must be. She’s only twenty-something. Looks like old Maura got a late start in the baby race.”

Lydia remembered Maura telling her that all her children had been stillborn. More lies.

“I don’t get it. Did Julian know that ‘Geneva’ was Maura Hodge’s daughter? Or did Eleanor?”

“Eleanor says she had no idea. Says that she hasn’t been to Haunted in twenty years, how could she have known? She and Maura weren’t exactly on speaking terms. She didn’t even know Maura had a daughter.”

“Or so she says.”

“Right.”

“Hey, Ford,” she said. “What are you doing tonight?”

“Funny you should ask. I was just about to take another little ride upstate. The address on Annabelle’s employment record was a place you’ve visited recently. The residence of Maura Hodge.”

She remembered then the noises she’d heard upstairs when they’d interviewed Maura, and the feeling she had that there was so much more going on than Maura was willing to reveal.

“Can you meet us at Payne Whitney in an hour? We’ll go up with you.”

“I never mind the company… unofficially, of course. You up to that?”

“Why not?” she said, her tone clipped, daring him to question her.

“Whatever you say, Lydia.”

“That’s an excellent philosophy.”

chapter twenty-six

Special Agent Charles Goban had a long, crooked nose set between small eyes so dark that his iris and pupil appeared to be one. His gray hair was close-cropped and Jeffrey could see his pink, slightly flaky scalp glowing under the overhead lights. A light sheen of sweat glistened on his wrinkled brow. Goban had the wiry build of a featherweight fighter and stood nearly three inches shorter than Jeffrey. Exuding a kind of pent-up nervous energy, he was a cork about to shoot off a champagne bottle. Although there was nothing to celebrate at the moment.

“I’m trying to get my head around why I didn’t hear about this sooner,” Goban said, wiping away the sweat from his forehead and looking at Jeffrey with some combination of suspicion and condescension.

“It was just a rumor,” answered Jeff. “We were following up. We never found him. Or any real evidence that he’d ever been down there.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. Lying to the FBI was not high on his list of things to do. He’d done it before and he’d probably do it again. But he avoided it when possible.

On the train on his way to the office, he’d been staring out the window and saw a dark figure disappear into a hole in the tunnel wall. It had reminded him of Rain and that tomorrow was the deadline he and Dax had issued for the whereabouts of Jed McIntyre. But all bets were off now that Rebecca was missing. He was sorry to fuck with the order of things down there, recognizing it as a way for people who didn’t belong to have a place in the world. But Jed McIntyre had Rebecca and the thought that she could be down there filled him with dread. He could only imagine her terror, and the thought of it caused a sharp pain behind his eyes. She was a good person, kind and hardworking, close to her mother. She didn’t deserve to be drawn into this nightmare, a pawn for Jed McIntyre to cause Jeffrey and Lydia pain. Jeff felt an intense guilt and desperation to find her… alive. But there was also the voice in his head that whispered to him that it was already too late.

When he’d arrived at the office, it was crawling with agents. The space was being treated like a crime scene, with technicians scouring for evidence, photographers snapping shots of their offices. An agent stood behind Craig as Craig showed how their security systems worked. The whole thing made Jeffrey extremely uneasy; he didn’t like other dogs on his turf. But it couldn’t be avoided now and he was going to have to deal with whatever it took to help Rebecca.

Christian Striker looked pale and agitated as he paced the foyer.

“This is so fucked up, man,” he said as Jeffrey approached.

“I know. What are we doing for Rebecca?”

“I’ve got ten of our guys visiting her friends and family, checking surveillance tapes from some of the other buildings on the block to see if we can get a handle on which way they went after they left. There’s not much we can do, honestly. We know he took her, but no one’s had a handle on Jed McIntyre in months. If we couldn’t find him before, how’re we going to find him now? It’s not good. We’re all too close to this, too worried to be thinking clearly and objectively.”

“I think I know where he might have taken her.”

“Christ, where, man?”

“Where’s Goban?”

“He’s in your office.”

So he told the agent about their trip into the tunnel and how it had yielded nothing but a window into a world he never knew existed. Before he had even finished, Goban was mobilizing a team to head down beneath the streets.

“You’re a fucking cowboy, Mark. You always have been. If you had told us about this sooner, Rebecca Helms wouldn’t be in this situation at all.”

Jeff didn’t reply, just sat staring and wondering if Goban was right.

“What were you going to do when you found him?”

Jeff shrugged.

“Yeah, do me a favor and don’t answer that. Just tell me one thing. Can you find your way around down