She screeched, thrust the poker at my chest, and missed. She tried to twist out of my grip but had no leverage on a broken leg and fell instead into my chest. I held her head all the way back, took the heavy glass shard from the couch, and, with my strong hand, shoved it into that throbbing vein.
Someone floated over me. I heard a voice. I tried to open my eyes, but my lids were too heavy, and it just didn’t seem worth it. I was moving, or being moved. I didn’t have the strength to do anything. I was in a car. Something tight around my arm. It hurt. It was too tight. I tried to pull away, but he wouldn’t let go. I managed to get my eyes barely open and saw the big face under the car’s dome light. This time, he was wearing a mint green sport coat, and my blood was all over it. I put my head back down and went to sleep.
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45
I
CLOSED MY EYES AND TRIED TO FEEL THE STILLNESS
in the early-morning air, to pull it inside of me and hold it there. Each time I breathed out, I tried to let go of a little more tension in my shoulders and my neck and my back. I let my arms hang at my sides. And then I tried to do the same with my mind, to let it relax and open up to whatever impulse I wanted to send its way. I wanted to empty it of all the events of the past few weeks, all the emotions save one. I held on to the anger. I let my mind go blank except for a bright, burning red stain that drew my complete focus. I took that stain and projected it out, across the distance from me to the target, and onto the bull’s-eye. The rest of the target fell away.
I picked up the gun. It felt comfortable in my hand. My fingers found their place around the grip, my index finger extended to the trigger. Everything felt right, and all I could see was the bright red target in front of me. As I raised my arm, the target grew larger. They say athletes who get in a zone see the basket or the cup or the baseball grow so big they can’t miss it. That’s how I felt. I was locked in on a target that looked to me as big as the entire wall. I knew I couldn’t miss it. I knew I wouldn’t.
I went through the checklist in my mind, the one Tristan and I had worked on. Arms raised, elbows slightly bent. Feet shoulder-width apart. Headgear and protective glasses in place. I adjusted my sleeve so that it didn’t make the stitches on my arm so uncomfortable. My wounds were almost completely healed.
The legal issues would take longer to sort out, but it looked as though self-defense would hold up. The cops had found enough in the cabin to support my story. What they hadn’t found was the archive. Bo had taken it. He had replaced it in the floorboard hideout with the brick that had killed Robin Sevitch. He had pulled it from the desk, exactly where Monica had told him it would be. The police had considered that a most interesting discovery.
Jamie was working through his issues. When he asked me if I thought he should tell Gina, I remembered the way I had felt the first moment I had seen his face on the screen. I told him I didn’t think she should pay the price for something he had done. We had done. I would keep his secret. I knew he would keep my secrets, too, if ever I had the courage to tell them to him. To anyone. I needed someone to tell my secrets to.
Harvey had come to visit in the hospital, and I had been glad to see him. We had decided to leave things on hold for a while. He was not, I was happy to hear, working for OrangeAir. With the exception of Monica, who had cut a nice deal for herself, neither were thirty hookers from Angel’s ring.
“Fire whenever you’re ready.”
I squeezed off the first round, and the target flinched. I didn’t even need to look to see where the bullet had passed through it. I fired again and again until the .38 was empty. I felt steady. I felt sure. I felt that I was in the right place at the right time, doing what I needed to be doing, and I didn’t even think about whether I would pass or fail. There are worse things in life than flunking a firearms test. I had seen some of them. Seeing them had changed the shape of my life, added corners and edges where there had been none before, and made the path clear.
I knew what I wanted. I knew what I was.
When I finished shooting, I set the gun down. I took off my earphones and my glasses. When I did look up, it wasn’t at the target but at the face of the officer monitoring the test. He looked at the target and back at me, and I knew that I had passed. It felt good.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter1SHE LOOKED RIGHT AT ME.IWAS SURE OF IT.First her head whipped around. Her hair, blond and loose and foamy as the head on a latte, swept across her bare back. I was freezing and miserable in my rental car. Had been for almost two hours. How could she be standing on the sidewalk looking so comfortable and so damned elegant in a strapless silk cocktail dress? But then, that’s how hookers are paid to look. Her shoulders turned next. They were battleship-wide, which they had to be to support the extravagant forward weight of what she carried out front. Her hips swung around, and finally the Jimmy Choo cha-cha heels upon which the whole package balanced. Perfect.Smile, Angel.I hit the button and let the camera run. It clicked and whirred for four or five exposures as I studied her face through the zoom lens. It was disconcerting, the way she stared in my direction, the way she bore down with an intensity so ferocious I was sure her eyes could see through the night, through the wrong
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Chapter2IRENE SURVEYED THE SIGHT IN FRONT OF USand shook her head.“Being a flight attendant used to be so much fun.” She sighed.It was the kind of bittersweet lament reserved for things that were loved and lost to the past. Like the first days of a new romance or the last days of blissful childhood, the airline business as we knew it had vanished. It was never coming back.The two of us stood at the head of the concourse, staring at the OrangeAir security checkpoint. It was morning rush hour in Pittsburgh, so the operation had the frantic quality of an earthquake response. Everyone talked at once, trying to be heard over the whine of the machinery. The X-ray belts cycled constantly. The magnetometers went off regularly, each alarm adding to the number of bored/angry/confused passengers that waited like an army of scarecrows for an individual wand search.“Thank God we’re in uniform,” was all I could say as we cut to the front of the line and flashed our airline IDs. I waited for Irene to
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Chapter3THE FLIGHT PASSED WITHOUT INCIDENT…without major incident. Tristan did spill a carton of orange juice on a man wearing a business suit. He made him happy with the promise of a free upgrade. That in spite of his suspicions that the savvy passenger had knocked the carton out of his hand on purpose, expecting exactly that result.“That’s not a suit,” he fumed. “It’s a polyester sponge from off the rack at the Men’s Wearhouse. It’s probably his designated spill suit. His real suit is up in that Tumi bag he stashed overhead.”Eventually we made it to Boston, flying hard, low, and late into an early-autumn rainstorm. With the wings rocking and the tail hammering, the cabin was quiet, filled with the brittle tension that hardens inside an airborne machine that seems to be rattling too much. But if there were silent prayers and last-minute promises to God, they all evaporated when the wheels touched the runway and we landed safely in the steady, soaking rain.It was still raining an hour
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Chapter4THE VESTIBULE OF MY APARTMENT BUILDINGlooked shabbier than usual when I rolled in. The tiles were mud streaked and the grout a few shades smudgier than when I’d left. The mailbox area looked like a flea market, littered as it was with free newspapers, delivery notices, and piles of take-out menus from Wong Fu’s Wok and Gianella’s Pizzeria. Both rows of boxes were festooned with yellow sticky notes and scraps of taped paper, temporary tags meant to identify permanent residents.My mailbox wore a clean, computer-generated label I had slotted neatly into the cutout provided for that purpose. My life felt like a mess in so many ways, I figured I’d try for neat and tidy wherever I could find it. The inside of my box was another story. When I keyed it open, it looked like a cross-section view of a trash compactor. As near as I could tell, the postman loaded the narrow boxes from the top, making the envelopes fit by jamming them down with a pile driver. Anything that didn’t fit—magazin
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Chapter5THE RAIN HAD PASSED THROUGH DURING THEnight, leaving in its wake one of those high-resolution fall days, the kind that make living in New England worth the endless, bone-cracking winters. The Commonwealth Avenue mall, which would spend much of the next several months in monochromatic stasis under a blanket of snow, was vibrant with fall colors. The venerable old elms that lined both sides of the wide promenade were thick with broad leaves at the vivid end of their life. They looked spectacular, but what I loved most was the sound they made. When the wind blew against them, the large, stiffening leaves shook into a sound that had the soaring resonance of applause, as if the trees were rewarding your walk among them.I was in search of my car, certain of the general vicinity of where I had parked it last but fuzzy on exact longitude and latitude. It had been a while since I’d had the old Durango out, but I knew it was on Commonwealth somewhere west of Exeter.The car did not reveal
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Chapter6THEWOLFBOROUGH SHOOTING RANGE WASN’Tmuch more than an opening in the trees at the end of a long dirt road. It was easy to spot Tristan leaning against a Porsche—aPorsche? —in the lot down at the open field that served as the pistol range. As far as I could tell, he was the only living organism there at ten-thirty on a Friday morning. I pulled into the space next to his and climbed out.“You’re late,” he said.“Sorry. Since when do you drive a Carrera?”“It’s Barry’s, and you’re changing the subject. Don’t even think about screeching up at the very last second when you go to Moon Island to take your range test. They don’t like that, and you’ll get all flustered, and you won’t shoot straight, and you won’t pass the test, and you won’t get your license, and I’ll feel like a failure. I have a personal stake in this. In fact, when are you scheduled?”“The week after next.”“I’m going with you. I’ll pick you up. We’ll get out there in plenty of time. That’s what we’ll do.”Tristan had swit
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Chapter7THE SUN WAS HIGHER IN THE SKY ASIDROVEback to the city, and I couldn’t find my sunglasses. The last time I’d had them was on a turnaround to Phoenix sometime last week, which meant they were buried in my suitcase, which was still sitting unpacked in the middle of my living room. That left me approaching the tollbooth for the Sumner Tunnel, fighting with my balky sun visor, digging for money, and juggling my cell phone all at once.“Hold on, Harvey.”“Wait, you cannot—”“Hold on.”I rolled down the window to greet the toll collector. “Good morning.” I got no response in exchange for my three bucks, but I did get passage back through to the city.“Harvey, are you there?” He was. “Did you talk to Carl? Did we get the extra time?”“I spoke to him yesterday afternoon. He will give us until a week from Monday.” His voice was in and out, but I was surprised we were connected at all, since I was in the tunnel under the harbor.“Harvey, that’s only ten days.”“He also gave me a warning. If he p
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Chapter8“ALEXANDRA!”Tristan screeched down the jetbridge and onto the quiet aircraft. I jumped and clanged the coffee pot against the coffeemaker. Fortunately, onboard coffee urns are nearly indestructible.“You startled me.”“Is that you? Oh, my God, dear, you are ablonde! But when did you do this?”I stuck the pot on the burner, reached up, and plowed my fingers through my new do. It was a familiar habit through unfamiliar territory. I wasn’t used to wearing products on my hair.“Last night, and I’m not a blonde, I’m merely highlighted.”“Look at you, all poofed and moussed. You look fabulous.”“Do you really think so?” If I had been unsure before, now I was totally convinced—I had made a terrible mistake. It was too much. “Is it too much?” I knew I shouldn’t have done it myself. What was I thinking taking fashion advice from Dan? “Do you like it? Is it a good color? Is it okay?”“Better than okay. Is that new makeup, too?Look at those nails. Girl, what got into you?”He turned me around, an
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Chapter9TRISTAN WAS IN THE GALLEY, WORKING FROMthe seating chart to prepare the drinks. I stared over his shoulder, bounced on the balls of my feet until my calves ached, and did nothing useful. “Do you have any celery? Jamie likes celery in his tomato juice.”“He didn’t ask for it, but I’ll check.” He found a stalk, dropped it in, and placed the glass in the last empty spot on the tray. I stared at the drinks for half a second, then picked up Jamie’s and left the rest. “I’ll be back for those. Let me do this first.”I tried a couple of smiles, all of which felt forced and painful. I picked the one that felt the least cheesy. When I pulled up next to Jamie’s seat wearing my forced and frozen smile, he didn’t even raise his head.“Jamie.”He glanced up and didn’t quite register who it was leaning over him to deliver his drink. He reached for it with a polite smile that turned to stunned surprise.He blinked at me, then looked up toward the galley, as if it would help his understanding to see
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Chapter10THE GRASS WAS BROWN AND BRITTLE IN THEHollywood Hills, and the trees looked exhausted.“Must be a drought out here,” I said, to no one in particular. No one in particular answered. Our cabbie, a man with only consonants in his name, spoke a weirdly paced version of English with the accents on the wrong syllables. He and Tristan were busy trying to locate the party. It seemed the number we had was not marked on the street where it was purported to be. Maybe it was one of those “if you have to ask, you don’t belong here” deals.I could have been still back at my hotel for how connected I felt to what was going on. After checking in, I had gone straight to the workout room, where my only company had been the droning television mounted in the corner. By the time I was finished pumping and running and lifting and generally trying to make myself stronger and better, I’d gone through six gym towels, three bottles of water, two and a half episodes of theKnots Landing marathon on TV, and
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Chapter11MY FIRST STOP AFTERTONY WAS THE BAR,where I knocked back not one but two postfondling margaritas on the rocks. No salt. It was just something, as Tony had suggested, to “take the edge off.” I could still feel his cold, grubby fingers grasping at me. I felt like dousing the area with alcohol to disinfect. Gin would have done nicely for that purpose.So, Angel had some competition. That certainly thickened the stew. According to Tony, there was a group at the party from Boston, sent out to protect the business interests of Angel’s East Coast operation. He’d also said the LA women had controlled the guest list and stacked it with clients of the Boston ring, mostly using names brought in by defectors from Angel’s group. This wasn’t an introduction party; it was a mass conversion effort. I wondered briefly how the Boston crew had gotten in, then realized how easy it had been for me to get the password.I took my third margarita with me and started wandering, being invisible and eaves
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Chapter12IHAD BEEN UP ONCE ALREADY WHEN THE ALARMwent off, so the banging on the door confused me. If I had already gotten up, what was I doing still in bed?“Alexandra, are you in there?”It was Tristan. That much I knew. I lay on my back in total darkness, which confused me even more because my eyes were open. The one thing I was completely sure of was how much my head hurt. I reached up to touch it to see how it could be the size of a basketball and found a damp washcloth on my face. It had probably started out cold but was now tepid, cooked by the sick heat radiating from my skin.More banging from the vicinity of the door, each loud blast registering in my entire body like a seismic event. “Wakeup, girl.”I peeled the washcloth off and took a couple of daggers to the deep cortex as the light hit my eyes.Make the pounding stop was the only thought that emerged—the pounding on the door and in my head. Everything felt wrong. My heartbeat was too fast. My breathing was too shallow. I was
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Chapter13BY THE TIMEICROSSED THE THRESHOLD ANDslouched into my apartment in Boston that evening, I had been in constant motion for nearly twelve hours straight, much of that on an airplane doing six hundred knots from one end of the country to the other.I dropped my bags in the middle of my living room, collapsed onto the couch, and let my head loll back onto the soft cushions. My apartment building was alive and noisy at that time of the evening. The heavy door downstairs swung open and slammed shut with dependable frequency as my neighbors came home from work. Next door, the baby cried, and I could smell the onions cooking in someone’s dinner. I sat with my eyes closed, luxuriated in the deeply tranquil state of being still.I had managed to get through the flight by maintaining a single-minded focus on not dropping, burning, melting, or breaking anything. But the brain at rest is fertile ground, and as I sat there, memories from the day and night before began to bubble up and come ba
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Chapter14HARVEY’S HOUSE INBROOKLINE WAS LIKE THEsuits he wore—formal for the rest of the world but comfortable for him. Also like his suits, if you looked closely, you could see the seams coming apart or the creases fraying from too much wear.We were in his office, which was the only room in which I ever felt comfortable. That wasn’t because it was so cozy. Harvey’s office was like an elegant reading room in a venerable old library—darkly paneled, highly burnished, and plush with an overstuffed wingback chair, a thickly upholstered couch, and a deep burgundy and blue rug. I always had the urge to whisper there. But I liked it better than his kitchen or his bath or bedroom, because that’s where he kept all the trappings of his illness—pill bottles, heating pads, and walking aids—that he didn’t want anyone to see.The only personal item he seemed to want anyone to see was the lovingly framed picture in his office of the dark-eyed woman with the luxurious auburn hair. She sat on his desk w
