Miles, she believed, was the key to making things right.
She would talk to him. She could confess her sins. She would throw herself at his mercy. Talk to Gilbert, she would say. Make him understand that what I did was as much for him as it was for myself.
Butter him up, if need be. Tell Miles he was a brilliant man, but she also knew he was a compassionate man, that he was capable of forgiveness.
Yes, yes, that might work.
So when she drove away from her home — she would get back there, she would — she found herself driving to Miles’s place.
She was almost there when she saw the limo pull out of his property and onto the road. She saw him in the back seat, up against the driver’s-side window.
If she were to have a chance to talk to Miles, she would have to follow him. And she kept on that limo’s tail, all the way into Manhattan. Along the way she kept asking herself, Where the hell is he going? When will he ever get there?
At one point, going into the city, the limo made a short, unexpected stop. Long enough for a front-seat passenger to trade seats with one in the back. Before Caroline could decide whether to act on the opportunity, the limo was on the move.
More than once, she considered whether to abort. Take the next exit and head back to New Haven. She was starting to feel the way she did when she’d call an airline and be placed on hold.
Your call is important to us.
The longer you waited, the less you were convinced of that. But you were afraid to disconnect, fearing that any second they’d get to your call. You might be next in line. She kept thinking Miles had to be close to his destination. But then the limo would keep on going, and going.
And then the red warning light had appeared in her gauge cluster, telling her she would soon be out of gas.
She was driving down Park when reality began to kick in.
Miles would never listen to her.
Miles would never see her side of things.
Miles would laugh in her face.
This entire drive into the city had been a colossal waste of time.
She hated it to have been for nothing.
The rage began to simmer. The world seemed to be turning red, as though her eyes were misting over with blood.
All of this was Miles’s fault. His greed, his ungrateful attitude, his disrespect for his brother.
No, no, his disrespect for her.
When the limo made that turn at Seventieth, when the headlights of Caroline’s SUV caught Miles’s profile in that back window, she floored it.
She didn’t make a conscious decision to do it. Something just snapped.
And a second later, there was a bone-jarring jolt, the explosion of an airbag, the thundering sound of metal hitting metal, and the shattering of glass.
Screams.
From inside her car and beyond.
And then everything went black.
Sixty-Five
New York, NY
Chloe forced herself to look away from the bloodied carpet and the red drops coming from Nicky’s closed hand. She didn’t want Rhys and Broderick following her gaze. She wasn’t sure Nicky was aware the glass shard in her palm had broken the skin.
“Can we just go and sign the papers and be done with this?” Chloe asked. “I really want to go home.” And, continuing with the act, she asked, “Can you give us a hint how much money we’re going to get?”
Rhys smiled. “I’ll tell you this. You’ll probably never be able to spend it all. We got the car parked around back so let’s—”
“What the hell?” said Broderick.
“What?” Rhys asked.
“I got blood or something on my foot.”
They all looked down at the splotches atop his right shoe. His shoes were black, so the redness of the splotches didn’t stand out. But the drops on the pale gray rug right next to his shoe certainly did.
Nicky’s eyes went wide. She looked at her own hand and saw the blood.
“Oh, shit,” she said.
“How’d that happen?” Broderick asked.
Everything from that moment on happened very quickly.
“Probably like this,” Chloe said. Taking half a step back, holding her piece of glass firmly in her hand, she raised her arm and swung it sideways across Rhys’s face.
The edge of the glass sliced diagonally across his cheek half an inch below his left eye. The cut was a good inch and a half long, and blood started spurting from it immediately. He screamed, “Fuck!”
His left hand went instinctively to his cheek. Blood was already streaming down the side of his face and seeped through his fingers as he tried to stanch the flow.
When Broderick turned to see what had happened to his partner, Nicky took her own piece of glass, already bloodied from the small cut in her palm, and drove it into the side of the man’s neck.
“Bitch!” he screamed, turning, raising an arm defensively.
Nicky kept a tight grip on the shard and managed to cut him again, on the side of his throat, just below the jawline. Broderick slapped his hand over the wound and started to make gagging noises.
Even with one hand on his cheek, Rhys tried to grab Chloe with his free hand. He gripped her left arm, but he would have done better getting hold of her right, since it was the one wielding the glass.
Chloe struck him again, aiming high.
She didn’t slash this time. She used a pointed end, much as Nicky had with her first strike against Broderick. But Chloe did not get Rhys in the neck.
Chloe got him in the left eye.
The man’s scream was primal. He released his grip on Chloe and now had both hands on his face, one over his cheek and the other over his left eye.
Broderick continued to make choking noises as blood flooded his windpipe.
Chloe and Nicky, glancing briefly at each other, understood that this was it.
Do or die.
This was their only chance. But they still had to get out of the room. The men’s anguished screams were sure to bring someone to that door. Chloe, forcing herself to keep a clear head in the face of epic chaos, positioned herself by it and waited.
She did not have to wait long.
The door began to open. A woman yelled, “What’s going—”
Roberta.
When she was halfway into the room, Chloe rushed the door, arms out straight, palms flat and up. She hit the door with everything she had, catching Roberta’s left leg in midstride. Roberta screamed as the door crushed her upper thigh. She went down.
Once Chloe had disabled Roberta — she dropped to the floor like the sack of shit she was, Chloe thought — she pulled the door open again, turned to Nicky, and shouted, “Come on!”
Chloe held the door until Nicky reached it. They stepped over Roberta, who’d been clutching her wounded leg but made one futile attempt to grab Nicky’s ankle as she ran past.
They sprinted down the hallway as far as the stairway landing, where it was just one flight down to the front door. As expected, Boris, the security guard, was stationed at the top of the stairs that led down. He’d heard all the commotion, especially Roberta’s cries of pain, and when he saw Chloe and Nicky running in his direction, he broadened his stance, getting ready to block their path.
He even grinned. The very idea that these two girls thought they could get past him.
But they had no intention of trying to get past him.
When they reached the landing, they quickly pivoted away from the guard and headed for the ascending staircase.
They were going up.
Sixty-Six
New York, NY