“You don’t have to protect me from anything,” I said.
“Two,” he said, letting his promise stand. “Make no mistake: There is one thing far worse than being accused of killing Chuck Bell.”
“What?”
“Being the accused killer of Saxton Silvers. A few people will make money when this firm goes down. A lot more will lose money. A lot of money. Shareholders, creditors, employees-they all get wiped out in bankruptcy. One thing you can be sure of. Somewhere in that long line of losers is someone mad and crazy enough to blow you away-if they get the opportunity. You understand what I’m telling you?”
I nodded, but he said it anyway, his expression deadly serious.
“Don’t give them the opportunity.”
39
IVY LAYTON WAS ON THE RUN. THAT WAS NOTHING NEW.
Running from one hiding place to another had become a way of life. What made tonight so different was the level of fear-a fear she hadn’t experienced since those terrifying days and nights in the Bahamas following the happiest day of her life. They had found her.
Again.
A bit of dust fell from the twilled linen cloth as Ivy climbed out from under it. The marble floor felt cold on her hands and knees.
Ivy had spent two of the last four years in Italy, where there seemed to be a Catholic church on every corner. Confessionals had become her go-to hiding spots. Tonight, it was just her luck that she’d darted into an Episcopal church-no confessionals in the Anglican tradition. A beautiful damask that covered the altar inside the chantry chapel had served her needs in a pinch.
St. Thomas Church is at Fifty-third Street and Fifth Avenue, a few blocks north of its more famous Catholic neighbor, St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Ivy recognized the French High Gothic style, and everything but the length appeared to be of cathedral proportions. Her first thought had been to conceal herself behind the high altar, which was front and center in the traditional design. Halfway down the nave she found the chantry chapel in its own alcove. It would have been perfect for a small wedding-and the hollow space beneath the small altar was an excellent hiding spot.
Ivy stepped cautiously from the chapel, her gaze sweeping across fifty rows of empty wooden pews in the church nave. Two hours earlier, when she’d rushed inside in a panic, the entrance doors had been unlocked and the chandeliers had been on. The vast interior was now dark, save for the indirect lighting on the sculptured stone wall behind the high altar. Hopefully lights off didn’t mean doors locked-as in Ivy spending the night.
She turned away from the lighted altar and walked slowly toward the narthex, trying not to let her heels click on the inlaid marble floors as she passed by the World War II memorial. Just thinking about the close call at the Rink Bar made her pulse quicken. If not for the bomb scare, it would have been the end of the line. She probably could have been in Canada by now if she had just kept running, but she had taken enough risks for one night. Her next move, she decided, would be just a few blocks to the west. Her friend Phillip would give her something to eat and a place to sleep. He’d helped her more than any man since Michael, but the relationship was completely platonic. Phillip was gay, a bartender at Therapy. Michael’s new wife wasn’t the only one who thought a gay bar was a good place for a woman to hide.
Lucky for Ivy that she had recognized Mallory before Mallory had recognized her.
Or maybe not.
Ivy pushed against the carved Archangel Gabriel on the heavy church door-the same door through which she’d run earlier. It was locked. She tried the one next to it, carved with the Archangel Michael-hoping that the name alone would bring good fortune. Locked, too. She put her shoulder into it, more out of frustration than an actual attempt at escape, only to discover the hard way that these old doors were made to last a millennium.
Wonderful.
The back of her neck tingled with goose bumps. That gut-wrenching fear was returning-not for herself, but for Michael. Now that she’d tipped her hand and they knew for certain that she was alive, she was not the only one in danger.
Ivy returned to the cavernous nave of the church, her gaze drifting toward the dimly lit high altar. There had to be a way out, and she knew she would find it. Somehow she’d always managed to stay one step ahead of them.
Her only worries were for Michael.
She drew a deep breath, and since she was in a church, she figured a quick prayer couldn’t hurt. Then she reached for her cell and dialed Michael’s number.
40
“MICHAEL, IT’S ME.”
I thought I was emotionally up to speed with the fact that Ivy was alive, but hearing her voice on the phone blew me away. People sometimes describe these moments in their lives as “time standing still,” but that must have happened only in movies from Papa’s generation. The feeling was the complete opposite for me. It was hard to fathom how so much of our past could be resurrected in a split second. Just those few words-Michael, it’s me-triggered a flood of memories, instantly bringing back all the things I had feared I was forgetting. Her laugh. Her touch. Her kiss. Even the smallest details of our first phone conversation, our first date, our first naked adventure were compressed into that nanosecond of joy, scores of emotional threads unraveling at warp speed and on parallel tracks that led straight to my heart.
But the sense of urgency in her voice was unlike any I had ever heard.
“Where are you?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to say.
“I can’t tell you.”
I was in my car driving back to Manhattan and was ready to go wherever she was.
“Just listen, please,” she said. “We are in so much danger now that they know I’m alive. They might torture or even kill you to lure me out.”
“Who are they?”
“Just run!”
“Wait! I need to see you.”
“Michael, please!”
An eighteen-wheeler flew past me in the next lane and nearly took the ragtop of my Mini Cooper with it. Tiny cars and the Cross Bronx Expressway were not a happy marriage.
“If you won’t see me, then why did you come back?”
“You know why. I told you.”
Her response caught me by surprise. “When? How?”
“My first warning.”
“I never got any warning.”
She hesitated, and I sensed her fear.
“Michael, the first text message. Two weeks ago, right after I saw Mallory in that gay bar with another man.”
“What?”
“Are you saying you didn’t get the message that said ‘beware the naked bears’?”
Naked bears? “I didn’t get anything like that.”
“Shit!” she said, her tone even more urgent. “Then they must be intercepting your messages. They might even be listening right now! Michael, you have to run.”
“I have to see you!”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“Ivy, don’t do this to me!”
“Don’t let yourself end up like Chuck Bell. Run!”
“Ivy, please-”
A loud crack on the line stopped me cold. It sounded like a gunshot.
“Ivy?”
The line was dead. My heart was in my throat.
My God, Ivy!
41
MALLORY POURED HERSELF ANOTHER GLASS OF WINE, EMPTYING THE bottle. She needed a shoulder to lean on-even cry on a little-and she found it in her friend Andrea.
“Let’s open another,” said Andrea.
Mallory grabbed a key from a hook on the wall. “Here,” she said, sliding it down the bartop to Andrea. “Michael’s personal stash is locked up in the cellar.”
“No offense, but do you really want to drink the good stuff in your condition?”
“Yesh,” Mallory said, slurring. “And the bottles we don’t drink we can pour down the drain. Bottom’s up, Michael.”
Andrea walked inside the climate-controlled cellar behind the bar, came out much too soon to have made an intelligent choice, and placed her selection on the bar.