dark shadow of a man whose face I couldn’t see asking, “Where’s the ghost?” Most of all, I knew there was pain- white hot, total, nearly indescribable in its intensity, the kind of pain that mercifully kills memory.
“No,” I said finally. “I really don’t.”
But between you and me, that wasn’t the whole truth. Memories were filing back quickly. I remembered a knee on my back, a black hood being placed over my head. I just couldn’t make sense of anything. It was a nightmarish jumble.
“Does the name Myra Lyall mean anything to you?”
I nodded my head slowly.
“An American crime reporter with the New York Times,” she said. “She had some connection to you, if I’m not mistaken. She wanted to talk to you regarding an article she was working on about Project Rescue. Then she disappeared.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Sarah Duvall was her assistant.”
I nodded again.
“We found Myra Lyall’s body yesterday in a canal about a mile from King’s Cross, one of our red-light districts. She was in a trunk. In pieces.”
I think she doled out the information like that for maximum impact. I tried to think about what she said in abstracts, not in logistics. Still the nausea and the shaking, which had been diminishing, returned with a vengeance.
“No record of her travel to London, either,” she said.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I felt some combination of grief for Myra Lyall’s end and terror at how it had happened. I wondered how I had made it to a plush Covent Garden hotel and she had wound up in a trunk in a London canal. In pieces.
“Ms. Jones, if you have the first idea what’s going on, I strongly recommend that you share what you know with me,” she said. She walked over to the chair by the door and pulled it up beside my bed, sat down slowly as if she were settling in for a nice long chat. “I can’t help you and I can’t protect you if you don’t. You seem like a nice girl, yeah? You seem frightened and I certainly don’t blame you. But a lot of people are dead, and from the look of you, it’s just luck that you’re not one of them. Maybe we can help each other.”
I didn’t ask for this. Not for any of it, I’d said to Ace.
Are you sure about that? he’d wanted to know.
I decided finally that I was out of my league. I asked to see her identification, which she offered to me without hesitation. Fool me once, you know? When I’d determined that she was who she said she was, I told Inspector Ellsinore everything-everything I could remember, anyway. While we talked, various nurses and doctors made their appearances, poking and shining lights in my eyes, checking and then changing the bandage on the wound at my side.
Inspector Ellsinore took copious notes. When I had finished giving my statement, I asked her to help me contact the American embassy. She did and they promised to send a lawyer to the hospital.
When the call was finished, she put a hand on my arm and said, “You’ve done the right thing, Ridley. Everything is going to be fine.”
I gave her an uncertain nod. “What happens now?”
She looked at her watch. “You get some rest. I’ll contact the U.S. authorities and let them know that you’re cooperating. And tomorrow we’ll figure out when and how we can get you home. Is there anyone there you want me to call?”
My parents were cavorting around Europe, snapping pictures and sending postcards. They could probably be here in a matter of hours, but I didn’t want them. Ace was clearly incapable of offering any help or support. I didn’t even think he had a passport. I had no idea where Jake was or if he was okay. The thought of him brought tears to my eyes, and a now-familiar feeling of panic regarding his well-being and whereabouts.
“No. Just if you find out anything about Jake Jacobsen, I need to know. Please.”
“I’ll see what I can find out. Try not to worry.”
She left her card on the table beside my bed, gathered up her things, and walked toward the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned back to me. “And I’m sorry, Ridley, but there are two officers outside this door. As much for your protection-”
“As for my detention,” I finished her sentence.
She nodded. “Just until we’re sure of what has happened to you, how you got here. You understand. So just stay put for tonight. Rest up. You have a busy couple of days ahead of you, I suspect.”
THE ROOM WAS cool and sterile and I lay there wide awake for I don’t know how long. I got up to pee once, but the journey and execution were so painful, I decided I’d hold it if I had to go again. There was a bedpan by my bed. But there was no way I was peeing in a bedpan. I just couldn’t deal with that. I felt numb, depressed, and very, very lonely. The phone sat waiting by my bed, but I didn’t feel that there was anyone in the world I could call. The truth was, I was on my own. I had been since the day Christian Luna sent me the photograph that changed my life. The only person I had been able to rely on consistently since then was Jake, and even that relationship was riven with lies and half-truths on his part. I tried to shut away the image of him bloodied and falling from some great height.
I tried to reflect on all that had happened, all that I knew: Dylan Grace and Myra Lyall, the things Grant had said, the streaming video from Covent Garden, the fact that I’d woken up in a hotel just blocks from that corner. I tried to apply my writer’s mind to all these disparate events and to extrapolate possible connections, come up with theories, but I just wound up feeling sick and afraid. I thought of Myra Lyall’s awful end, Sarah Duvall’s death on the street, Esme Gray, Grant’s last phone call to me. Even before recent events, Dylan had accused me of being the point at which everything connected. And I could see that he was right.
All this had started because I wanted to know Max, I wanted to see his true face in order to better know myself. But I was no closer to him. And I’d never been further from me-I barely even recognized my reflection in the mirror. All in all, the whole enterprise had been a deadly and unmitigated failure.
A nurse padded in and offered me some pills. “For sleeping, love,” she said kindly. I took them from her and pretended to swallow, gave her a grateful smile. When she’d left, I took them from my mouth and dropped them in the cup beside my bed. I didn’t want to be drugged into sleeping. I didn’t feel safe enough for that.
I alternated between a kind of sleepy twilight and agitated restlessness until I heard something strange in the hallway that snapped me into total wakefulness, poked a finger of fear into my belly. It was a soft, sudden noise, a quick shuffle followed by a thud, that was over almost before it began. But something about it was not quite right…as if the energy of the air had changed. I sat wide-eyed and listened for a while.
I relaxed a little after a minute or two. Other than the ambient sounds-a television somewhere turned on low, the metronomic beeping of a machine, an odd ubiquitous humming that probably came from the fluorescent lights and a hundred medical machines-there was silence. I’d just started to drift off again when another noise came from just outside my door, the sudden jerking of a chair. I saw footsteps cross in the light that leaked in from the threshold. I got up from the bed with effort and looked around the room. The bathroom was a trap; no exit. I was in no condition to crouch between the bed and the window. I walked quietly and stood beside the door, looked around for something with which to defend myself. The effort it required to do this was staggering.
I must have been quite a sight, bare-assed in my hospital gown and stocking feet. I painfully bent over to pick up one of my boots, which stood beneath the chair upon which Inspector Ellsinore had sat with all her questions. It was the only thing that I had the strength to lift that looked substantial and heavy enough to do any damage.
My breathing became shallow and I could feel the adrenaline pumping in my veins. I noticed the phone with Inspector Ellsinore’s card beside it, and also the call button, which I should have pressed while I was still lying in the bed. I thought about going back, but the distance of maybe five feet seemed insurmountable to walk or even crawl, considering how much effort it had taken to make it to the door. I leaned my weight against the wall, boot poised, and listened to the hallway. A minute passed, maybe two, and I started to wonder if I was suffering from paranoia (who would blame me?) or posttraumatic stress. I was about to put my boot down when the door started to open, so slowly I almost didn’t notice until the dark form of a man slipped inside. He stood with his back to me, staring at my empty bed.
Before I could lose my nerve, I brought the boot around hard, hitting him solidly in the temple. The blow was
