Samantha, what with the roar of the jet engines, thought maybe she’d misheard. “What?”
“It’s got something to do with the doctor at the fertility clinic. So far as I know, I’m no one’s father, biologically speaking.”
She was stunned. “It never would have worked.”
“No.”
Samantha looked out at the clouds. “I couldn’t have gone through with it. Travis and I... we were in the back of his van, and... I couldn’t do it. I don’t think I could ever have done it. Not for all the money in the world. I mean, he’s actually a nice guy, you know? I was actually getting to like him, and that was why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to go through with it. If those two hadn’t come along, I think I would have found a way to end it, to walk away. Even if Mom went nuts on me.”
“I still don’t get why you agreed to do it. How your mom talked you into it.”
Samantha looked at her uncle as if he were a dumb two-year-old. “Because she’s my mom.”
Before they landed in New Haven, Miles persuaded Samantha to call her father and tell him what had happened. When they landed outside New Haven, Gilbert was waiting. Samantha ran into his arms. After they’d had a private moment together, Gilbert approached his brother.
“I had no idea,” Gilbert said. “I can’t believe she did this to our daughter. It’s unforgivable.”
“Samantha’s going to need a lot of support,” Miles said. “Maybe even therapy. It’s like she needs to be deprogrammed from what Caroline did to her.”
Gilbert looked like he’d consider stepping in front of a bus if one had happened to go by at that moment.
“There’s more,” he said. “And maybe it’s connected.”
He told Miles he’d seen Caroline heading into the Omni, that someone had slipped a key card into his pocket and told him where to find her. Caroline had been waiting for another man.
“She hasn’t come home since.” He hung his head, then looked up. “And when I got the call from the plane, I phoned her, confronted her with that. She didn’t even try to deny it. Normally, that’d be her default position, but I knew too much for her to say none of it was true. She started crying, said it was all for me. I’ve called a lawyer. I’m getting the locks changed.”
Miles said something his brother already knew. “There’s no telling what she might do. Maybe to herself.”
Gilbert nodded.
“Go be with Samantha. She barely scratched the surface when she talked to you from the plane.”
When Gilbert left, Miles tried to reach Chloe again. She didn’t answer, and another text went undelivered.
He tried to remember the name of the diner where she worked. Finally, it came to him. He opened a browser on his phone, found it, tapped the number.
“Paradise Diner,” a woman said. “You got Vivian.”
“Yeah, hi. I wonder if it would be possible to speak to Chloe.”
“I’m wondering the same thing. She’s not here.”
“When’s her shift?”
“Right now,” Vivian said. “She hasn’t shown up, isn’t answering her phone, and I’m shorthanded. If it’s not one thing with that girl it’s another. You wanna leave a message?”
Fifty-Five
New York, NY
Nicky had run a washcloth under very cold water in the bathroom sink, wrung it out and folded it into a compress. When Chloe was brought back from her meeting upstairs with Jeremy, she was crying. When she collapsed facedown onto the bed, Nicky could see streaks of blood seeping through the back of her blouse.
Nicky had rolled up her top to reveal the belt marks on her back. Chloe winced as Nicky applied the cool cloth, moving it from one wound to another. Chloe’s bravado, her flip attitude, were gone. She seemed to Nicky somehow smaller, as though her encounter upstairs had diminished her, made her less of a person.
“I told them,” she whimpered. “I told them everything they wanted to know.”
Nicky dabbed her cheek. “Sorry I don’t have ice.”
Chloe said, “I think he knew most of it already. Someone had told him. He was confirming things.”
“Take it easy,” Nicky said. She took the cloth off Chloe’s back. “This is warm already. Let me make it cold again.” She went back into the bathroom and ran more water into the sink, holding her finger under it to test the temperature.
“He was kind of weird with me,” Chloe whispered when Nicky returned. Nicky had told her she thought their conversations were monitored, so they were talking as quietly as possible.
“Weird how?”
“He put his hand on my head for a long time. Just holding it there. He ever do that with you?”
“You mean like if he’s holding your head down on his—”
“No, not that. Putting his hand on my head, like — this will sound totally nuts — like he was feeling my life force or something.”
“I can honestly say he’s never done that with me,” Nicky said.
Chloe struggled to sit up on the side of the bed, letting her toes brush the carpet. “He really is going to kill us, isn’t he?”
Nicky sighed. “I keep thinking, because it hasn’t happened yet, maybe it won’t.”
Chloe said, “Suppose he opened the door tomorrow and told you to leave. What are you going to do? You’re going to go to the police, right?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“I don’t know. I’d be so grateful to get out, maybe I wouldn’t talk.”
“He can’t take that kind of chance,” Chloe said. “We need to get a message out to someone, anyone.”
Miles, she thought.
“Closest I got was when I picked up a Wi-Fi signal by the window,” Nicky said. “But they found out before I could send a message.”
“If we could set off an alarm or something.”
“Thought of that,” Nicky said. “Was going to try to start a fire one day but couldn’t figure out a way to do it.”
“There must be something.”
Nicky went quiet for several seconds, and when she did talk, her whisper was almost inaudible. “I had this one idea, but I don’t know how to do it. But you’re older than me, so maybe you’ve got, like, skills I don’t.”
Chloe leaned in closer. “Try me.”
Roberta rapped lightly on the door to Jeremy’s office before entering.
“He’s here,” she said.
Jeremy, sitting at the computer, looked her way. “Send him up in five.”
Exactly five and a half minutes later, there was another soft knock on the door. Jeremy, not taking his eyes off the screen, said, “Come in.”
A man walked into the room and stood on the other side of the desk. Jeremy didn’t stand or extend a welcoming hand.
“Sit,” he said.
The man sat, settled into the chair, and crossed his legs. Jeremy entered a few more keystrokes, did one last, dramatic tap on the Enter key with his index finger, then turned and looked squarely at his guest.
“So,” Jeremy said. “You ran into some problems.”
The man nodded. “I can finish the job, but I’ll need a new partner. There’s someone I’ve worked with in the past. I’ll give him a call.”
“What happened to her?” Jeremy asked.
“You really want to know?”
“I wouldn’t have asked otherwise.”
“She was caught off guard by the subject’s girlfriend,” Rhys said. “We fucked up.”
“You see any way that we’re exposed?”
“No.”