“Students crying on your shoulder, hmm? It doesn’t do to get too close to the girls, Harrison. I thought you were smart enough to understand that,” she said.
Hogan positively blanched. Hah! This was going to be fun.
“What are you talking about?” he asked quietly.
“This is rather delicate. But it’s my duty to speak up. It’s come to my attention that you were engaged in an inappropriate relationship with Whitney Seward.”
He sat up straight for once. “What? Who told you that? It’s a complete lie!”
“Be silent, Harrison, and hear me out. This is a deeply serious matter, for Holbrooke and for your own future. I have solid evidence. I think you know what it is. You weren’t particularly careful, were you?”
“Whitney was my student and my advisee,” Hogan protested. “If we spent time together, it was only-”
“Please.” She held up her hand. “I need to caution you not to speak further without representation.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Patricia’s tone was quiet, menacing.
“What is this really about? You have an agenda here, Patricia, I know it.”
“Don’t try to weasel out of it. You were naughty, and you’ve been caught with your hand in the honeypot. Normally I would suspend you immediately, but I don’t think the Holbrooke community could handle that right now, on top of these overdose deaths and with only a few days until the endowment campaign closes. But I felt it only fair to let you know, I have the evidence, and I could use it at any time. Do I make myself clear?”
24
CARMEN DRIFTED IN and out of consciousness. When she was awake, sometimes she was lucid, sometimes she wasn’t. When she knew what was happening, damn, it hurt so bad! She couldn’t stand it. But not for herself. She thought only of Papi, wherever he was-home, somewhere, looking for her, waiting, going crazy. He must be tearing at his hair, pounding himself with his fists. Every second she felt Papi’s agony. She imagined her captor, saw his cold eyes, remembered the gun he’d brandished at her. But in her mind she wasn’t herself; she was her father, consumed by these terrible worries about his daughter. She saw her own death, bullets piercing her flesh. But she was Papi, visualizing her murder while sobbing over her dead body. It was his pain she experienced, not her own.
Eventually time stretched out and lost its meaning. Carmen began hallucinating. She knew she was hallucinating, but that didn’t matter. The visions were blindingly real. A woman started visiting her in the closet, a woman who looked strangely like her dead mother. But she didn’t talk like Mami had. This woman talked fancy, whereas Mami’s English had barely been passable. And this woman was mean, whereas Mami had been very loving.
“Life is a nanosecond,” the woman said. “Death is what lasts. Don’t fight it.”
“I can’t die. Papi would be too sad. You already left him. He needs me.” Carmen said this, even though she knew this woman was not her mother but rather a stranger masquerading as her mother.
“We don’t choose when to die, Carmen. Death finds us, just like this man found you. When he comes back, he’s going to kill you.”
“No. I don’t think so. Not right away anyway. He needs me to do something for him first.”
“You’re not going to do it, are you?”
“I have to. Otherwise he’ll kill Lulu. He told me.”
“And you believe him?”
“Of course I believe him. He killed Whitney and Brianna. He has the devil inside him, I know.”
“Then you’re making a deal with the devil. That’s not smart, Carmen. You’ll burn in hell. Resist him, say no. Let him kill you. It’s not so bad where I live. Come, and we’ll spend time together.”
“Please, don’t tell me to do that!” Carmen cried. “I need to save Lulu! I need to see Papi again! What the man’s asking is wrong, but it’s not so terrible. Who will it hurt if I do what he asks? Then maybe I could even escape-”
“Escape? You’re a foolish girl if you think that’s possible. Look at the way he tied you up. You’ll never get out of this closet,” the woman said.
“He has to take me out eventually, if I’m going to do what he’s asking. Maybe I could escape then.”
“No you can’t. He has a gun.”
“So maybe he won’t use it.”
The woman just laughed, an ugly cackle, nothing like Mami’s.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are, the way you fool yourself. How much time do you think you have left, Carmen? A day? A few hours? You don’t even know how long ago it was that Whitney and Brianna died, do you? You have no clue.”
“It can’t be that long, because I’m still alive. If I’d gone a week without food and water, I’d be dead. I mean, I am still alive, right?…Right?” Carmen asked nervously.
“I’m not going to tell you the answer to that one.”
“Someone will find me!” Carmen cried, in tears. “Someone will come rescue me, I know!”
“What are you talking about? Stupid girl! What makes you think anybody’s even looking for you?”
25
THE TEAM HAD AGREED to stage out of a pub a block from the Worth Street subway stop. When Melanie and Linda arrived, the place was overflowing with drunken Wall Streeters who’d begun their Christmas revels early. Melanie stood near the door and scanned the crowd. After the bracing wind outside, the sudden heat and noise made her dizzy. No sleep and very little food-she was running on fumes. She shrugged out of her coat, taking a deep breath.
“You see your friends?” Linda shouted over the din.
“Not yet. Looking.”
“Hey,” Linda called after a moment. She leaned closer to Melanie. “There’s a major hottie in the corner checking you out like you’re a thick, juicy steak and he’s a starving man.”
“Where?”
“Over there, but-No, don’t look, you no-brain!”
“That’s Dan.”
“What?”
“C’mon,” Melanie said, grabbing Linda by the arm.
Dan was staring at her. And somehow, in these clothes, in this place, she could handle it. As she walked toward him, their eyes locked, and everything else fell away. Blood pounded in her veins. She forgot about their almost love affair, their sort of breakup, the nights she’d spent alone obsessing over the way things had ended. She looked right back at him and let herself remember how he kissed.
“That’s him? His body is sick,” Linda said.
“Shut up now, or I’m gonna smack you,” Melanie said.
Bridget Mulqueen and Trevor Leonard, sitting on bar stools beyond Dan, popped into view as they drew near. She waved to them, not even trying to make herself heard over the racket. Dan stood up.
“Look at you,” was all he said, but there was a soft light in his eyes that she wanted to memorize.
“My sister dressed me up so I could pass muster. This is Linda. She’s gonna get us into Screen.”
Dan shook Linda’s hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise,” Linda said. “Mel mentioned you once or twice.”
“Oh, yeah?” He glanced at Melanie, looking gratified.
“Enough small talk,” Melanie said. “We need to go over our plan.”
“Was she always so serious like this?” Dan asked Linda.
“Yeah, since she was a kid. That’s how she got into those fancy schools.”
“I admire that about her,” he said.
“Will you guys stop?” Melanie said, though she was eating it up. “Let’s talk business.”
She had told Linda that they were investigating heroin dealing at area nightclubs but given no indication that Esposito himself was their target or that the case was relating to the Holbrooke girls’ deaths. She’d disclosed enough to warn Linda of the risks of the operation, without giving her details that could compromise their plan or put Linda in additional danger.