“I’ve got some people at the office who might be able to. But maybe we could just look her up online, find an address. Maybe she knows where he’s gone.”
“I guess. I don’t know why—”
She was interrupted by the sound of brakes squealing, tires ripping across pavement, like a driver in panic trying to avoid a crash.
“What the hell was that?” Miles said.
“Up on the road,” she said.
Charise, so far as they still knew, remained parked at the end of the driveway.
“Let’s go, Chloe,” Miles said, springing to his feet, leaving Todd’s phone on the mattress. They went out the back door, steps from the bedroom. Once on the ground, they both ran past the Pacer for the main road, but Chloe instantly had the lead. Miles felt resistance in his legs, like they didn’t want to do what was being asked of them.
But he soon caught up to her at the roadside, where he found Charise and Chloe helping a woman out of a van that had veered off partway into the ditch about twenty yards behind the parked limo.
“I nearly hit it!” the woman screamed, sliding out from behind the wheel.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Charise asked her as she went around to the front of the van, leaving the driver’s door open, to see how far she was into the ditch.
“Nearly hit what?” Chloe asked.
“You didn’t see it?” the woman said. “A goddamn deer!”
“A deer?” Miles said, catching his breath.
“Thing came out of nowhere!” the woman said. “Came shooting across the road, went running into the woods there!” She pointed. “I came this close to hitting the son of a bitch!” She held up a hand, spacing her thumb and index finger an inch apart. She looked at Charise. “You must have seen it.”
Charise shook her head. “Was looking in the rearview when I heard you hit the brakes. You nearly plowed into the back of me. Nice maneuvering. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
The woman looked down and noticed, seemingly for the first time, that the front of her blouse and pants were wet. “Yikes, that smarts,” she said, as two empty paper cups rolled out of the open van door, dropped onto the shoulder, and were swept under the vehicle by the wind. “That coffee was fuckin’ hot when it hit me and now it’s gettin’ cold.”
She ran her hands across the front of her clothes, as if she could somehow brush the spilled coffee away.
“Where you headed?” Miles asked.
The woman eyed him for the first time, blinked, and said, “Driving to Rochester to see my sister.”
“You’ve still got your back wheels on the gravel there,” Charise said. “I’m betting, you take it slow, you can back out without needing a tow.”
“Let’s give it a whirl,” she said, getting back into the van. She put it in reverse, feathered the gas so as not to send the back wheels into a spin, and slowly pulled the van back onto level ground.
“Nicely done,” Charise said.
Through the open driver’s window, the woman said, “Sorry for all the commotion. You see that deer, give it a piece of my mind.”
She steered the van back on the pavement and drove off. Charise kept watching it until it disappeared.
“Huh,” Charise said.
“What?” Miles said.
“Nothing, sir.” She paused. “Will you be wanting a drive back soon, Mr. Cookson?”
“Not sure,” he said, and glanced at Chloe.
She shrugged. “I guess you might as well. I can try to get in touch with Todd’s mom, let you know what I find out.”
“Let me go back and get his phone,” Miles said. “Might have someone who could break into it.”
He and Chloe walked back down the driveway and mounted the cinder block steps to the front door again. Together, they walked to the bedroom at the back of the mobile home.
Miles stared at the bare mattress.
“Where is it?” he said.
“The phone?” Chloe said.
“I left it right there.”
“Maybe it slid off. We kind of took off in a hurry. It could’ve fallen onto the floor.”
Chloe dropped to her knees and looked under the bed.
“Nothing here,” she said, and got to her feet again. “You sure you didn’t have it in your hand?”
He shook his head adamantly. “No, I mean yes, I’m sure. Hang on.” He patted his pockets, wondering whether he’d slipped the phone into one of them without thinking. But he came up with nothing. “No, I left it on the bed. I’m certain.”
Chloe said, “Maybe you had it in your hand and dropped it when we ran to the road.”
“No,” he said with certainty. “No. I left it right here.”
“Well,” Chloe said, “it didn’t sprout legs and walk out of here on its own, unless you’ve designed an app which does that.”
Miles felt a sense of uneasiness wash over him. “Maybe it was your mouse,” he said.
Chloe eyed him skeptically, shook her head. “It has to be somewhere.”
She got down on her knees again to take a second look under the bed. “I’m telling you, it’s not here.”
Miles’s own cell phone rang. He took it from his pocket, looked at the screen.
“It’s Charise,” he said. “Yes, Charise?”
“Mr. Cookson, something doesn’t feel right. It’s probably nothing. But you know, I never saw any deer.”
“Okay.”
“That woman. Said she was driving to Rochester to see her sister.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“She’s got a few hours ahead of her. Kind of early to be picking up a coffee for her.”
Miles shook his head, not understanding. “What’s that, Charise?”
Charise said, “Why’d she have two cups of coffee? I mean, sure, you’re on a long trip and want to be well supplied, but it’s not like she can pull over to the side of the road and step into the bushes, if you get my meaning.”
Twenty-Five
East Seventieth Street, Manhattan
There was a knock on the door of Nicky’s room.
She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, in her pajamas, mindlessly playing Angry Birds on an iPad, not able to do much else with it but play games as the Wi-Fi was disabled in this part of the house. It was like the room was cocooned with lead or something. There was a window, but it was a small one, two feet square, and all it did was look out to the alley. About five feet away, a wall of brick.
Her phone had been taken from her, so she’d been unable to text with anyone since she’d been put in here nearly a week ago. No phone calls, either, and she couldn’t send or receive emails. It was weird, not having any communication with anyone from the outside world.
She couldn’t even use having to go to the bathroom as an excuse to be let out once in a while. This guest suite had its own bathroom — and what a bathroom it was, too. Everything marble. A huge whirlpool tub and a walk-in shower. One of those things next to the toilet that shot water up your ass. And they were bringing meals to her three times a day. One thing you had to say about this place: the food was fantastic. Jeremy Pritkin had some pretty talented people working in the basement kitchen. The head chef had supposedly been lured away from a Four Seasons somewhere. And the room itself was better than decent. A huge king bed, thick-pile rug that felt wonderful on bare toes, a flat-screen that got about two hundred channels. If you had to be under house arrest, this was the house to be in.
When the knock came, she didn’t bother to get up and go to the door. She couldn’t open it from the inside. So she shouted, “Come in!”
She heard a deadbolt turn, and then the door swung wide open. It was Roberta Bennington, Jeremy’s assistant. Pretty hot looking, Nicky thought, for someone pushing fifty. Black hair, lots of curves, and nearly six feet tall with her four-inch heels. She’d apparently been with Jeremy for fifteen years, and was the first person Chloe met when she was drawn into this place by her Brooklyn friend’s acquaintance.