Die Again Tomorrow (20 page)

CHAPTER 36

J
oan frowned when the buzzer rang. It was late and she was alone. She disliked being by herself in the apartment, but Greg was working the night shift at the ER and wouldn't be home for several more hours. She waited for the unexpected visitor to go away, but then the noise came again—an insistent second buzz.

She got out of bed, slipped into her velour robe, and trudged to the intercom.

“Who's there?”

Surprisingly, a woman's voice answered. “You don't know me, but . . .” She sounded nervous. “Can I talk to you? It's important.”

“What? Who are you? What is this about?”

“I lost something I think you have. A ruby ring?”

Joan inhaled a sharp breath. She looked down at her left finger, where the rich red stone sparkled in the hallway's dim light. The fact that it was a legacy of Greg's mother made it all the more special.

“Sorry,” she said into the intercom. “You must be mistaken.”

But the strange coincidence jarred her—how in the world did some random woman know about her ring at all?

“Please, just for a minute? I don't have long.”

Joan hesitated for a beat until her curiosity won out. “Okay.”

She pressed the buzzer, and through the peephole watched a slender, dark-haired woman approach her door alone. She had an honest face. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar. Wide eyes, a delicately sloped nose, pale lips. Her features conveyed the sensitivity of someone who had a soft touch, but her eyes seemed troubled. Joan noticed that she wasn't carrying a purse like most women did. All she had on was her clothes: a faded pair of jeans, sneakers, and a blue Windbreaker zipped up to her chin. A crease deepened between her brows before she knocked.

Joan opened the door. “Hi.”

“Hi,” she said. She looked young, no older than thirty. Her gaze shifted instantly down to Joan's hands. When she saw the ruby, she gasped.

Then she looked up with a mixture of shock and dismay. “That's it.”

Joan shook her head. This poor girl was clearly confused and in the throes of some kind of distress. “I don't think so,” she said gently.

“No, that's it, I'm sure of it.” She stared at Joan with blatant astonishment, as if trying to make sense of something inexplicable.

“Sorry, but you're mixed up.” Joan twisted the band around her finger. “This belonged to my husband's mother.”

The woman's eyes grew large. “Your husband—he told you that?”

Her disbelieving tone piqued Joan's annoyance. “Yes, why?”

“What's his name?”

“As if it's any of your business?”

“Mr. Hughes? I saw it on the mailbox.”

“
Dr.
Hughes,” Joan retorted.

“Is he home?”

“
No
, he's at
work.
Who are you, anyway? And how did you know I had a ruby ring?”

“He's lying,” the woman declared. “That ring was bought a week ago in Florida for a very specific purpose.”

Joan laughed uneasily. “Okay, you're nuts and I'm closing the door.”

“Wait!” the woman stuck her foot in the doorframe. “I'm not crazy, I swear. My name's Isabel Leon and I'm telling you the truth. Hear me out.”

Her name with the face suddenly clicked. Joan peered through the crack at her.

“Hang on, you're the one on that show.
Wild Woman
or something on cable?”

“Yes! That's me.” She smiled proudly. “On the Outdoor channel.”

“I saw one episode over the summer . . . Peru, was it? In the rainforest?”

“Bolivia.”

Joan opened the door a little wider. So she wasn't necessarily nuts—though appearing on reality TV wasn't exactly the mark of sanity. She was just sorely mixed up.

“What are you doing here? How did you get to me?”

“I'm sort of on a hiatus from the show.” She paused as though considering what more to reveal. “I can't really say much, but I'm working on another project right now . . .” she trailed off.

“Also a survival show?”

She grimaced. “You could say. Listen, I have to run, but you should know: That ring didn't come from your mother-in-law. It's a tool to catch a violent investor who goes by the name Robbie Merriman. He buys up life insurance policies and then goes after victims for their death benefits. I was one of them, and now he's put my whole family in danger.”

Joan let out a cry. “Oh my God! You too?”

“What do you mean,
too
?”

“My husband also sold his policy, and then we heard the rumors . . . We've been so afraid . . . I was doing everything to track down the perp, but I've had so little to go on . . .”

Isabel stared at her. “But he gave you that ring?”

“It was a surprise last night.”

“I'm sorry, but he's definitely lying. He must have something to do with Robbie Merriman.”

Joan crossed her arms. “You have some nerve, coming here and accusing—”

“July sixth, 1957,” Isabel cut in.

“What?”

“It's engraved inside, isn't it?”

The words felt strangled in her throat. “How could you know that?”

“I told you.” Isabel pointed to Joan's paralyzed hand. “That ring was mine.”

CHAPTER 37

I
sabel checked her watch. It was already 11:35
P.M.
Less than a half hour to go.

“I'm sorry,” she said, “but I really have to leave now.”

The woman in the doorway was fretting at her ring as though it were an alien specimen. “I just can't . . .” she muttered. “How . . . ?”

Isabel couldn't be sure if her bewilderment was genuine. It was possible, of course, that she knew more than she was letting on. But it didn't seem that way. Maybe it was the jaunty blond curls framing her face, or the elegant way she held up her neck, or the warmth in her eyes that projected care and concern—but the sum added up to an air of integrity. Her age and look reminded Isabel of a teacher she'd had in grade school whose uncompromising standards concealed her tender core.

Still, she knew better than to say too much.

“I didn't catch your name,” she said as she turned to go.

“Joan.” The woman blinked at her in a daze. “But you can't just go. I don't understand . . . aren't you going to explain . . . ?”

Isabel took a few steps back, considering what more to say. Nothing that could compromise the investigation or put Galileo and the Network in danger. As she was about to apologize, she caught sight of a framed picture on the wall behind Joan's head. It was an action shot of her with a striking man in his fifties who had salt-and-pepper hair and the kind of chiseled bone structure that would make a sculptor swoon. They were on some white-sand beach, and Joan was laughing at the camera while her grinning husband carried her in his arms toward the surf. They looked like the Platonic ideal of a carefree married couple.

But the real Joan in front of her was far from happy. She glanced over her shoulder to see what was transfixing Isabel.

“That was last year.” The ache in her voice was palpable. “Maui, for our thirtieth anniversary.”

Isabel was about to reply when a realization hit her:

She had seen that man before.

The day she went to Riverside Park to drop off the ring. He was sitting on a bench, typing on an iPhone. Like the other strangers in the vicinity, he had appeared not to notice her. But she remembered his face. It was too handsome to forget.

There could be no doubt now: he was involved with Robbie Merriman. Hell, he could even
be
Robbie Merriman.

“What?” Joan demanded. “What's wrong?”

She must have looked stricken. “I can't . . . here.” She opened her clenched fist, which held the note she'd scrawled earlier with Galileo's phone number. It wasn't enough to compromise his safety or location. But it was a way to connect with Joan again. There was a chance that if she were innocent and willing, she might be able to help.

“Call this number,” Isabel said, “if you want to know the truth.”

Then she turned and scrambled out of the building, ignoring Joan's pained shouts to wait. There was no time to waste. She thought of Andy asleep in bed, totally unaware of the danger that threatened him and why. She thought of her mother, who also knew nothing. What good would it do to warn them, when they would inevitably try to escape? According to Robbie's warning, that would trigger the creep who was watching their house to call in the fatal tip. The tip that would send Andy away to the place he feared the most.

She jumped into the cab, whose meter was now over $50. The driver raised his eyes from his e-reader and glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His black turban wound around his head like a coiled snake.

“Where to?” he asked in his thick Indian accent.

“1844 Lex,” she panted. “In East Harlem.”

He raised his eyebrows. “The projects?”

“Yeah. I'm, uh, meeting someone. Can I borrow your phone really fast? I . . . left mine at home.”

He gave her a sympathetic nod and handed over his cell. Whatever she was doing there, he seemed to know it wasn't good.

The taxi squealed away from the curb as she dialed Galileo. His phone rang and rang unanswered. When the message machine beeped, the words tumbled out in one breath: “I went to the ring's address and found a woman wearing it in apartment 1B, Joan Hughes, said her husband Dr. Greg Hughes gave it to her, and get this—I saw him in Riverside Park when I dropped it off, he has to be involved somehow, I don't know about her, but I gave her your number . . .” Isabel paused to breathe. “It's almost midnight. I know you said not to, but you know where I'm going now. I have to. I'm sorry. You don't need me anyway, since you have Richard. I just hope—”

A harsh tone cut her off and a robotic voice droned: “Message limit exceeded.”

She closed her eyes.
I just hope I come back in one piece.

 

 

The building that housed the projects was a beige brick monolith that spanned the length of an entire city block. A few scattered streetlights cast a wan glow on its crumbling paint and thin vertical windows. Their look reminded Isabel of a jail—which, she supposed, wasn't far off.

A couple of guys in hooded sweatshirts and baggy jeans were loitering near the unattended front door, smoking. As she hurried by, a distinctive odor engulfed her, and it wasn't cigarettes. Cold stares bored into her back. She felt about as conspicuous as a gazelle in a lion's den.

“Hey, pretty mama,” one of them crooned after her. “Slow down, we ain't gonna bite.” There was a note of menace in his voice that kicked her adrenaline up a notch. She ignored him and quickened her step.

She was ready to fight. All her fitness training, her experience facing down savage environments, her accrued mental toughness—she was counting on every survival skill in her arsenal to make it through this night. Though she looked petite, she knew enough karate to wipe out an attacker. Her calves twitched to act. She mentally ran through the deadliest self-defense moves her father had taught her: a side kick to the throat, a knee drop to the heart, a back kick to the groin. Yet her years of practice in martial arts and the intensive training for her show had never been tested in a real-life assault situation, and she still wasn't up to peak strength since recovering from—well, from death. Damn, did that take a lot out of you. It wasn't like a bout with the flu.

She hovered anxiously outside the front door, keeping one eye on the huddled guys who were watching her. On the wall was a list of apartment numbers and corresponding buzzers. She pressed 4B. It was 11:59
P.M.

Maybe no one would answer. Maybe she would wake up from this nightmare and be back in her cozy double bed at home in Key West, with Andy snoring in the next room and the sound of her mom's television trickling in from the hall.

But then the buzzer sounded. She pushed open the door and went in. There was barely a lobby to speak of, just a bank of old elevators next to a stairwell. A few crushed beer cans were piled atop an overstuffed garbage can in the corner that reeked of rotting food. Yellowed cigarette butts littered the floor around it.

The button to call the elevator didn't light up, but after a few seconds, the doors screeched open. Inside the steel car was a putrid mess of what looked like dog piss. Or human piss. She took the stairs. With each flight, her heart pounded harder—more out of mounting fear than exertion. Who was inside 4B and what were they going to do to her?

She could still go back to the ship. She could climb into bed next to Richard and let herself be held. On the top step of the fourth floor, she paused. The temptation beckoned like a siren song. It wasn't too late to turn around. But poor Andy—what would he do if the feds showed up to wrench him away? How could she live with the consequences, knowing she could have done something to prevent it?

She grimaced and kept going, out of the stairwell, down a sparse hallway with about ten doors on either side. From one apartment she could hear the angry shouts of a man and woman arguing. She fought the urge to knock on their door and plead with them to watch her go into 4B. But that wouldn't accomplish anything. The most they could do would be to call the cops, which was strictly forbidden. There was only one option.

She stopped in front of the plain brown door of 4B. No noises came from within—no chatting, no voices, no nothing. But inside, she knew someone was waiting for her.

She knocked. Heavy footsteps plodded toward her and then the door swung open. The first thing she saw was the crumpled limp body on the floor. A man's body. He looked like a thug, with multiple black tattoos sheathing his biceps and a thick gold chain around his neck. A wifebeater hung off his shoulder and his oversized pants sagged. He was curled on his side, knocked out, mouth open. A massive bruise was darkening his puffy eyelid.

Isabel felt a scream rise in her throat as she looked to the left. There, on the ground, another thug was writhing. His front teeth were bashed in. A stream of blood dribbled over his lips and down his chin, pooling on the wood floor where his cheek was pressed. His eyes seemed to roam in and out of consciousness as he let out an anguished moan.

Before she could make any sense of it, a third powerfully built man stepped out from behind the door and fixed his severe gaze on her.

He was Galileo.