Jessica cruised his shoulders, his broad chest. The gold crucifix on the chain around his neck winked in the bar lights.
Go home, Jess.
"Maybe some other time."
"There is no time like now," he said. The sincerity in his voice dripped. "Life is so unpredictable. Anything could happen."
"For instance," she said, wondering why she was prolonging this, deep in denial about the fact that she already knew why.
"Well, for instance, you could walk out of here and a stranger with far more nefarious intentions could do you terrible bodily harm." I see.
"Or you might step into the middle of an armed robbery in progress and be taken hostage."
Jessica wanted to take out her Glock, lay it on the bar, and tell him she could probably deal with that scenario. Instead, she just said: "Uh- huh."
"Or a bus might jump the curb, or a grand piano might fall from the sky, or you might-"
"— get buried under an avalanche of bullshit?"
He smiled. "Exactly."
He was cute. She had to give him that. "Look, I'm really flattered, but I'm a married woman."
He drained his drink, spread his hands in surrender. "He's a very lucky man."
Jessica smiled, dropped a twenty on the bar. "I'll tell him."
She slid off her stool, walked to the door, using all the determination in her arsenal not to turn around and look. Her undercover training paid off sometimes. But that didn't mean she didn't work her walk for all it was worth.
She pushed open the heavy front door. The city was a blast furnace. She walked out of Finnigan's, around the corner, down Third Street, keys in hand. The temperature hadn't dropped more than a degree or two in the last few hours. Her blouse stuck to her back like a damp washcloth.
By the time she reached her car she heard the footsteps behind her and knew who it was. She turned. She was right. His swagger was as brash as his routine.
Nefarious stranger, indeed.
She stood, her back to her car, waiting for the next clever line, the next macho come-on designed to knock down her walls.
Instead, he did not say a word. Before she knew it he had her pinned against the car, his tongue in her mouth. His body was hard; his hands strong. She dropped her purse, her keys, her defenses. She kissed him back as he lifted her into the air. She wrapped her legs around his lean hips. He made her weak. He took her will.
She let him.
It was one of the reasons she married him in the first place.
31
The Super let him in just before midnight. The apartment was stifling and oppressive and quiet. The walls still held the echoes of their passion.
Byrne had driven Center City looking for Victoria, visiting all the places he thought she might be, all the places she might not, coming up empty. On the other hand, he didn't really expect to find her sitting in some bar, totally unaware of the time, a graveyard of empties in front of her. It was unlike Victoria not to call him if she couldn't make their appointment.
The apartment was just as he had left it earlier that morning: their breakfast dishes still in the sink, the bedclothes still in the shape of their bodies.
Although he felt like a prowler, Byrne stepped into the bedroom, opened the top drawer in Victoria's dresser. The brochure of her life stared back: a small box of earrings, a clear plastic envelope with ticket stubs of touring Broadway shows, a selection of drugstore reading glasses in a variety of frames. There was also an assortment of greeting cards. He took one out of the envelope. It was a birthday card of the sentimental stripe, this one with a glossy fall harvest scene at dusk on the cover. Was Victoria's birthday in autumn? Byrne wondered. There was so much he didn't know about her. He opened the card to find a long message scrawled on the left-hand side, a long message written in Swedish. A few bits of glitter fell to the floor.
He slipped the card back into the envelope, glanced at the postmark. BROOKLYN, NY. Did Victoria have family in New York? He felt like a stranger. He had shared her bed, and felt like an onlooker into her life.
He opened her lingerie drawer. The scent of lavender sachet floated up, filling him with both dread and desire. The drawer was full of what looked like very expensive-looking camisoles and slips and hosiery. He knew that Victoria was very sensitive about her outward appearance, despite the tough-girl posturing. Beneath her clothes, though, it seemed she spared no expense to make herself feel beautiful.
He closed the drawer, feeling a little ashamed. He really did not know what he was looking for. Perhaps he wanted to see another segment of her life, a piece of the riddle that might immediately explain why she had not come to meet him. Perhaps he was waiting for a flash of prescience, a vision that might point him in the right direction. But there was none. There was no violent memory in the folds of these fabrics.
Besides, even if he were able to mine this area, it would not explain the Snow White figurine. He knew where that had come from. In his heart he knew what had happened to her.
Another drawer, this one filled with socks and sweatshirts and T-shirts. No clues there. He closed all the drawers, gave a hurried glance through her nightstands.
Nothing.
He left a note on Victoria's dining room table, then drove home, wrestling with the idea of calling in a missing-person report. But what would he say? A woman in her thirties didn't show up for a date? No one had seen her in four or five hours?
When he arrived in South Philly, he found a parking spot about a block from his apartment. The walk seemed endless. He stopped, tried calling Victoria's number again. He got her voice mail. He didn't leave a message. He struggled up the stairs, feeling every moment of his age, each facet of his fear. He'd grab a few hours' sleep and then start looking for Victoria again.
He fell into bed at just after two. Within minutes he was asleep, and the nightmares began.
32
The woman was tied to the bed, facedown. She was naked, her skin streaked with shallow scarlet welts from the whipping. The light from the camera highlighted the smooth planes of her back, the sweat- slicked curves of her hips.
The man entered from the bathroom. He was not imposing in a physical sense, but rather carried about him a cinematic villainy. He wore a leather mask. His eyes were dark and menacing behind the slits; his hands held an electric prod.
As the camera rolled, he stepped forward slowly, fully erect. At the foot of the bed he hesitated, the hammer of a heart between strikes.
Then took her again.
33
The Passage House was a safe haven and shelter on Lombard Street. It provided counsel and protection to teenaged runaways; since its founding nearly a decade earlier, more than two thousand girls had passed through its doors.
The storefront building was whitewashed and clean, recently painted. The insides of the windows were webbed with ivy and flowering clematis and other climbing plants, woven through white wooden latticework. Byrne imagined that the purpose of the greenery was twofold. To mask the street-where all the temptations and dangers lurk-and to indicate to the girls who were considering just passing by that inside there was life.
As he approached the front doors, Byrne knew it might be a mistake to identify himself as a police officer-this was anything but an official visit-but if he came in like a civilian, asking questions, he could be someone's father, boyfriend, dirty uncle. At a place like the Passage House, he could be the problem.
Out front, a woman was washing the windows. Her name was Shakti Reynolds. Victoria had mentioned her many times, always in glowing terms. Shakti Reynolds was one of the founders of the center. She had devoted her life to the cause after losing a daughter to street violence years earlier. Byrne badged her, hoping the move would not come back to haunt him.