number. The girl on the cash register was new and finally relented.
Check bounced.
The manager has called. Three times. Most recently, fifteen minutes ago. Told Allison that if she isn’t there with $123.76 in cash in the next hour, she’s going to call the police and tell them Allison Fitch has defrauded them.
As it turns out, Allison has more than five hundred dollars in cash in her purse. A bunch of dickheaded traders from a prominent Wall Street firm had a party at the bar last night. They’d made some kind of killing in the market and were celebrating. Throwing money around. Tipping big. And, earlier in the day, Allison had gone to the ATM and taken out a couple of hundred. With all that cash, she figures she could go on a shopping spree when she gets up the next day. A warm-up before the really big money comes. She figures Howard Talliman will be in touch anytime now to set up a meeting, where he’ll hand over the cash in exchange for her silence.
Boy, she thinks, the expression on his face when she let him believe she’d heard Bridget having some kind of top secret chat with her husband. Guy looked like he’d just eaten a rat sandwich. She’d just figured it stood to reason a man like Morris Sawchuck had secrets, and that he might discuss them with his wife.
Suppose she’d heard some of them?
Hilarious thing is, she never heard a goddamn thing. But now she’s more sure than ever that she’s going to get that one hundred grand. Pretending to hear the call was just the icing on the lesbo-affair cake she needed to seal the deal.
So she figures, what the hell, she’ll pay off that bitch for the scarves, then come home, go back to bed.
She is slipping on her jacket, throwing the strap of her purse over her shoulder when she gets a buzz from the lobby.
Allison hits the button. “Yeah?”
“It’s me. We need to talk.”
Shit. Bridget.
Allison lets her in and half a minute later Bridget is at her apartment door.
“Hey,” Allison says, closing the door as the woman comes into the kitchen.
“What did you tell him?”
“What?”
“What did you tell Howard? What did you tell him you heard?”
Allison holds up a hand. “Look, we met, we came to an arrangement, and everything’s okay, so don’t worry about it.”
“What did you hear?”
“I’m not getting into this with you. And listen, if anyone’s got a bone to pick, it’s me. You should have been up front with me. You should have told me who you really were.”
“Allison, listen to me. You’re making a mistake, pushing Howard too far.”
“We got along fine. Everything’s cool.”
“Whatever he’s agreed to give you, you have to promise him you’ll never, ever, hit him up for more. He’ll do anything to protect my husband. If you’re smart, you’ll call it all off. You’ll tell him you don’t want any money, that he doesn’t need to buy your silence, that you’ll never say a word about us to anyone, that you never heard any-”
“Look, this is fun and all, but I really have to go. I’ve got to run downstairs and deal with this bitch who says I owe her money. I’ll be, like, five minutes. Stay here, make yourself at home, whatever, we’ll talk when I get back.”
“You have to believe me,” Bridget says. “You’re in over your head.”
“Fine, fine, we’ll talk about it when I get back.” Allison slides her purse strap higher onto her shoulder and heads out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her.
Bridget stands briefly in the kitchen, then, feeling restless, moves farther into the apartment. She walks into the living room area, where the pullout couch Allison sleeps on is extended, the covers a mess. She reaches for a Cosmopolitan on the coffee table, looks at the cover featuring Ashley Greene and the headline “60 Sex Tips,” notices the issue is months old. She drops it back onto the table.
Bridget goes to the living room window, gazes down the street, looks at the traffic. There’s a car down there with something funny on top of it. A small car, a Civic maybe, with a short pole fixed to the roof with brackets, and something mechanical-looking on the end of it.
Bridget steps away from the window, still restless. She wanders into the bedroom, casts her eye upon this second unmade bed. She walks around it to the bedroom window and stands there, listens to the muffled sounds of the city through the pane of glass, feeling anxious. She berates herself, for at least the hundredth time, for allowing herself to get into a compromising relationship. For putting everything at risk. Herself. Her husband. His future.
I’m such a fool, she thinks. Such an idiot. I have everything and I’m throwing it away. Need to control my impulses. There’s that weird car again. What is that on-
Hears something behind her. Starts to turn.
Everything goes white.
She cannot breathe.
NICOLE is finished. She has retrieved the cell phone from the target’s purse. She is preparing to leave when she hears the door open. It’s too soon for the cleanup crew. She has only just made the call.
The roommate. It must be the roommate. She’s supposed to be at work. She’s come back to the apartment during the day.
Shit shit shit.
From the kitchen, a woman calls out, “Bridget?”
Bridget?
Nicole’s briefing for this job included two names: the target, Allison Fitch, and Courtney Walmers, the woman with whom she shares this Orchard Street apartment.
If the woman Nicole has just killed is Bridget, then the person entering the apartment could be the target. Or it could still be Walmers.
Doesn’t much matter. It could be goddamn Britney Spears, for all Nicole cares. It’s a complication she must deal with.
Nicole intends to move around the bed, flatten herself up against the wall before the woman comes into the bedroom. But before she can make the move, the woman appears in the doorway.
Her eyes move from Nicole to the dead woman and back again. In an instant.
That’s all it takes for Nicole to see who she is. She recognizes her from the photos she was provided beforehand. This is Allison Fitch. She’s about the same size and height as the dead woman. Roughly same color hair.
Fitch screams, turns, runs.
Nicole knows she has to move quickly to shut the woman up. Forever.
Twice the work for the cleanup crew. They’ll have to deal with it.
Nicole intends to take the same shortcut out of the room that she used to enter it. Straight across the bed. Sees the moves in her head without even having to think about them. Push off the floor with left foot, right foot hits the bed, left foot lands on other side.
Should save her a full second.
Fitch has just slipped from her sight, tearing through the kitchen for the door. Nicole leaps onto the bed, but her foot gets tangled in the rumpled bedspread. Nicole tumbles forward off the far side of the mattress, dragging the bedspread with her as she slams into the wall.
She untangles her foot from the spread, comes through the bedroom door like a sprinter charging out of the blocks. The door to the hall is open. She can hear frantic footsteps, at least a floor below.
Not good.
Nicole descends the two flights of stairs three steps at a time. Bursts onto the street. Stops, looks both ways.
No sign of Allison Fitch to the north.
No sign of Allison Fitch to the south.
Nicole takes out her cell and calls Lewis. “You’re not going to like this,” she says.
