ANDREW GROSS
No Way Back

Copyright

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Harper

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

Copyright © Andrew Gross 2013

Andrew Gross asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2013

Cover photographs © Silas Manhood

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007489572

Ebook Edition © APRIL 2013 ISBN: 9780007489589

Version: 2016-09-20

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Prologue

Wendy

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Lauritzia

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Wendy

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Roxanne

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Cano

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Chapter Forty

Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-Two

Chapter Forty-Three

Chapter Forty-Four

Chapter Forty-Five

Chapter Forty-Six

Chapter Forty-Seven

Chapter Forty-Eight

Chapter Forty-Nine

Chapter Fifty

Chapter Fifty-One

Chapter Fifty-Two

Chapter Fifty-Three

Chapter Fifty-Four

Chapter Fifty-Five

Chapter Fifty-Six

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Gillian

Chapter Fifty-Nine

Chapter Sixty

Chapter Sixty-One

Chapter Sixty-Two

Chapter Sixty-Three

Chapter Sixty-Four

Chapter Sixty-Five

Chapter Sixty-Six

Chapter Sixty-Seven

Chapter Sixty-Eight

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Chapter Seventy

Chapter Seventy-One

Chapter Seventy-Two

Chapter Seventy-Three

Chapter Seventy-Four

Chapter Seventy-Five

Chapter Seventy-Six

Chapter Seventy-Seven

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Novels by Andrew Gross

About the Publisher

If a body is just a body, who will step forward to ask why someone is killed and who killed them? If a body has no name or no history, then who will demand justice?

—A grieving mother of a victim

of Mexico’s drug wars

Prologue

The trip had been Sam’s idea.

A five-day R and R down in Mexico over spring break. Only a twenty-hour-drive away. Ned’s dad had brought up all the trouble they were having down there, but then things seemed to have quieted down recently. Anyway, where they were going, Aguazula, was just a sleepy town along the coast with not much more than a beach, a thatched-roof cantina, and maybe a little blow-away weed. Sam’s buddy George lived there, teaching English. He said it was paradise.

Aguazula.

Blue waters.

At the last minute, Ned’s girlfriend, Ana, decided to come along, lured by the promise of some first-rate photo ops for her photography project. The three of them were seniors at the University of Denver. And it would probably be the last real fun they’d have, at least for a long time, since they were all graduating in a couple of months and then it was out into the world. The only things he’d have on his résumé: two years of lacrosse, a 3.2 GPA, and a business degree. If there would even be a job out there by the time he graduated. The last two summers Sam had interned back east at this boutique fixed-income shop. But now even Wall Street wasn’t hiring anymore, and in truth, Sam wasn’t even sure finance was his thing. He really didn’t know what he wanted to do. Other than, right now, a swan dive off a rocky ledge into a grotto of warm, blue water.

Ned was sleeping in the passenger seat of the Acura SUV, having driven most of the night once they hit New Mexico, all the way to the Mexican border. Culiacán was only ten minutes ahead, according to the AAA map they had. Aguazula was still a three-hour-drive away.

Paradise.

In the hazy light, Sam saw a car coming up from behind him. Once dawn had broken, Sunday morning, he had begun to enjoy the drive, drinking in the amazing countryside. He’d never been in rural Mexico before. Flat stone houses hugging the hills; farmers with goats and chickens along the side of the road. Spindly jacaranda trees. He’d been to Cabo once, with the family. But that was just about fancy resorts with PGA golf courses and deep-sea fishing. And he’d also been to Cancún once, on spring break, but that was such a party freak show, they hardly left the hotel. This was the real thing. An old woman sat behind a stand on the roadside selling melons and dried chiles. Sam waved to her as they passed by.

On the outskirts of town, the car caught up and went by them on the two-lane highway. A white Jeep with Texas plates. A man and a woman inside. In Culiacán they’d have to fill up. Maybe grab some breakfast. The road seemed to bring them right into the center of town. They passed a school, Escuela Autonomous de Centro Sinaloa. Just a flat-topped, one-level building with a droopy flag and what looked like a rutted soccer field.

There was a backup of some kind, as the road wound down into the center of town. It all seemed pretty quiet this time of the morning. Everyone must be getting ready for church. He was struck by all the crosses. A virtual sea of them—white, shimmering—atop the roofs. It was one of the most beautiful sights he’d even seen.

Next to him, Ned finally stirred. “Where are we?”

“Culiacán. Couple of more hours. Dude, check it out.”

Ned sat up and gazed around. “Whoa!” His eyes growing startlingly wide. “What is this, like a spawning ground for churches?”

Sam nodded. “The mother ship.”

The narrow street that led into Culiacán’s central square was momentarily backed up. Some old farmer seemed to be stuck, trying to drag his cart across the cobblestone road. Sam pulled up behind the same white Jeep that had passed them a few minutes ago.

In the back, Ana sat up, rubbing her eyes. “Hey, where are we, guys?”

“Paradise,” Sam declared, looking at the sea of white crosses. “At least, only a couple of more hours away.”

Ana groaned. “Right now, my idea of paradise is a place we can grab some coffee and take a pee.”

“I can go for that myself,” Ned chimed in approvingly.

“Okay.” Sam feathered the clutch. “Soon as this dude goes by, let’s see what we can do.”

Lupe stood on the roof, with its view of the town square, his AR-15 ready. It was quiet on a Sunday morning. A few food stalls were setting up to do business after Mass. A handful of unemployed men were already drinking in the cantina. A church bell rang. La ciudad de cruzes. The City of Crosses, it was called. Lupe knew the names and could count ten of them from right here.

He was nineteen, the son of a baker. He had dropped out of school in the fifth grade and come under the influence of his uncle, Oscar, who took out a wad of American hundred-dollar bills and asked Lupe if this was what he wanted in life. And he answered, yes, it was. He’d seen the American movies. It was always the rich men who got the girls, who knew how to enjoy life. He started by doing simple things, like being a lookout and delivering packages. He knew exactly what the packages contained. Then, a few months back, they needed a local policeman to disappear. It was easy to do these jobs; these magistrados were fat and bought and sold themselves to the highest bidder. They lined their own pockets and did nothing for the poor. The man Lupe worked for had built schools and soccer fields. He had provided food for those who needed it. The policeman disappeared; only his hands and feet were ever found. And his badge. Which sent the message You do not fuck with the Z’s. Or we’ll paste you. Now, nervously, Lupe manned his own crew for the first time.

The white SUV would come down the road into town at a little after 10:00 A.M., he was told. Two Anglos would be inside. A man and a woman. Do it in the open, he was instructed. Let the whole world see.

Lupe didn’t like killing people. He would rather play football and impress the girls. With his sandy-colored hair and bright blue eyes, he was always popular. Except he knew this was the way to climb up the ladder. And they were all part of the same corrupt game, no matter which side they were on. Govermentales, politicians, the police. Even the priests. No one was innocent. Even he knew that much.

Someone shouted, one of the lookouts from the rooftops up ahead. “They are coming!” Then: “Hay dos!” he heard. There are two.

“Dos persones?” Lupe called. Just as told.

“No. Dos coches.” Two cars.

No one had told Lupe that.

He quickly radioed back. His uncle, who was having coffee at his hacienda, asked him, “Are you sure?’

“Sí. Two white wagons. Anglos. They are passing the school now.”

That meant they would be in the square in a matter of seconds. Lupe gave the signal to the old man, who brought the cart across the narrow stone street, instructing the burro to stop. Coming down the hill, Lupe did see two white vehicles making their way down Calle Lachrimas, named for the Holy Mother’s tears.

“There are two!” he radioed Oscar, and looked up to the verandah across the square. “Both Anglos. Which one is it? Do you know the plate number?”

His uncle’s voice came back. “No. Let me check.”

The front car honked at the cart. The old man appeared to do his best, moving as slowly as possible, but he couldn’t block the road all day. The joke was, he’d probably had a hand in more killings than all of them!

“What do you want me to do?” Lupe asked again, as the old man cleared the road. “It must be done now?”

“Kill them all,” his uncle’s voice came back. “Let God decide.”

The old man gave the burro a whack, and the cart seemed to magically clear the road.

By that time, Ned was going over the map. Ana had pulled out her Nikon and was snapping away at a little girl who waved back at her, going. “Oh, man, this is great!”

Sam put the car back in gear. “We’re rolling!”

All of a sudden several men in jeans with white kerchiefs around their faces stepped out from the buildings. From the square itself. Some were even on the rooftops.

The one in front of Sam seemed no older than himself, maybe even younger, looking at him with a dull indifference in his eyes.

They were all aiming automatic weapons.

No! Sam wanted to tell them, No, wait … You’ve made some mistake! but the next thing he heard was a scream—Ana’s, he was sure—as the car’s front and side windows exploded virtually at once, ironlike fists slugging him all over like the hardest lacrosse balls he had ever felt, and then the explosions seem to just go on and on, no matter how much he begged them to stop. On and on, until the boy pulling the trigger in front of him was no longer in his sight.

WENDY

CHAPTER ONE

He was handsome.

Not that I was really checking anyone out, or that I even looked at guys in that way anymore—married going on ten years now, and Neil, my youngest, my stepson actually, just off to college. I glanced away, pretending I hadn’t even noticed him. Especially in a bar by myself, no matter how stylish this one was. But in truth I guess I had. Noticed him. Just a little. Out of the corner of my eye …

Longish black hair and kind of dark, smoky eyes. A white V-neck T-shirt under a stylish blazer. Late thirties maybe, around my age, but seemed younger. I would’ve chalked him up as being just a shade too cool—too cool for my type anyway—if it wasn’t that something about him just seemed, I don’t know … natural. He sat down a few seats from me at the bar and ordered a Belvedere on the rocks, never looking my way. His watch was a rose-gold chronometer and looked expensive. When he finally did turn my way, shifting his stool to listen to the jazz pianist, his smile was pleasant, not too forward, just enough to acknowledge that there were three empty seats between us, and seemed to say nothing more than How are you tonight?

Actually the guy was pretty damn hot!

Truth was, it had been years since I’d been at a bar by myself at night, other than maybe waiting for a girlfriend to come back from the ladies’ room as part of a gals’ night out. And the only reason I even happened to be here was that I’d been in the city all day at this self-publishing seminar, a day after Dave and I had about the biggest fight of our married lives. Which had started out as nothing, of course, as these things usually did: whether or not you had to salt the steaks so heavily—twice, in fact—before putting them on the grill—he having read about it in Food & Wine magazine or something—which somehow managed to morph into how I felt he was always spoiling the kids, who were from Dave’s first marriage: Amy, who was in Barcelona on her junior year abroad, and Neil, who had taken his car with him as a freshman up at Bates. Which was actually all just a kind of code, I now realized, for some issues I had with his ex-wife, Joanie. How I felt she was always belittling me; always putting out there that she was the kids’ mother, even though I’d pretty much raised them since they were in grade school, and how I always felt Dave never fully supported me on this.

“She is their mother!” Dave said, pushing away from the table. “Maybe you should just butt out on this, Wendy. Maybe you just should.”

Then we both said some things I’m sure we regretted.

The rest of the night we barely exchanged a word—Dave shutting himself in the TV room with a hockey game, and me hiding out in the bedroom with my book. In the morning he was in his car at the crack of dawn, and I had my seminar in New York. We hadn’t spoken a word all day, which was rare, so I asked my buddy Pam to meet me for a drink and maybe something to eat, just to talk it all through before heading home.

Home was about the last place I wanted to be right now.

And here it was, ten after seven, and Pam was texting me that she was running twenty min late: the usual kid crisis—meaning Steve, her hedge-fund-honcho husband, still hadn’t left the office as promised, and her nanny was with April at dance practice …

And me, at the Hotel Kitano bar, a couple of blocks from Grand Central. Taking in the last, relaxing sips of a Patrón Gold margarita—another thing I rarely did!—one eye on the TV screen above me, which had a muted baseball game or something on, the other doing its best to avoid the eye of Mr. Cutie at the end of the bar. Maybe not looking my 100 percent, knockout best—I mean, it was just a self-publishing seminar and all—but still not exactly half-bad in an orange cashmere sweater, a black leather skirt, my Prada boots, and my wavy, dark brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Looking decently toned from the hot-yoga classes I’d been taking, texting back to Pam with a mischievous smile: BETTER HURRY. V. SEXY GUY @ BAR AND THINK HE’S ABT TO MAKE CONTACT. *GRIN*

And giggling inside when she wrote me back: HANDS OFF, HON! ORDERED HIM ESP FOR ME!

THEN BETTER GET YOUR ASS HERE PRONTO :-) I texted back.

“Yanks or Red Sox?” I heard someone say.

“Sorry?” I looked up and it was you know who, who definitely had to be Bradley Cooper’s dreamy first cousin or something. Or at least that’s what the sudden acceleration in my heart rate was telling me.

“Yanks or Red Sox? I see you’re keeping tabs on the game.”

“Oh. Yanks, of course,” I said, a glance to the screen. “Born and bred. South Shore.”

“Sox.” He shrugged apologetically. “South Boston. Okay, Brookline,” he said with a smile, “if you force it out of me.”

I smiled back. He was pretty cute. “Actually I wasn’t even watching. Just waiting for a friend.” I figured I might as well cut this off now. No point in leading him on.

“No worries.” He smiled politely. Like he’s even interested, right?

“Who happens to be twenty minutes late!” I blurted, thinking I might have sounded just a bit harsh a moment ago.

“Well, traffic’s nuts out there tonight. Someone must be in town. Is he coming in from anywhere?”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “Park and Sixty-Third!” Then I heard myself add, not sure exactly why, “And it’s a she. Old college friend. Girls’ night out.”

He lifted his drink to me, and his dark eyes smiled gently. “Well, here’s to gridlock, then.”

Mr. Cutie and I shifted around and listened to the pianist. The bar was apparently known for its jazz. It was like the famous lounge at the Carlyle, only in midtown, which was why Pam had chosen it—close to both her place and Grand Central, for me to catch my train.

“She’s actually pretty good!” I said, suddenly not minding the thought of Pam stuck in a cab somewhere, at least for a while. Not to mention forgetting my husband, who, for a moment, was a million miles away.

“Donna St. James. She’s one of the best. She used to sing with George Benson and the Marsalis brothers.”

“Oh,” I said. Everyone in the lounge seemed to be clued in to this.

“It’s why I stay here when I’m in town. Some of the top names in the business just drop in unannounced. Last time I was here, Sarah Jewel got up and sang.”

“Sarah Jewel?”

“She used to record with Basie back in the day.” He pointed to a stylishly dressed black woman and an older white man at one of the round tables. “That’s Rosie Miller. She used to record with Miles Davis. Maybe she’ll get up later.”

“You’re in the business?” I asked. I mean, he did kind of look the part.

“No. Play a little though. Just for fun. My dad was actually an arranger back in the seventies and eighties. He … anyway, I don’t want to bore you with all that,” he said, shrugging and stirring his drink.

I took a sip of mine and caught his gaze. “You’re not boring me at all.”

A couple came in and went to take the two seats that were in between us, so Mr. Cutie picked up his drink and slid deftly around them, and asked, motioning to the seat next to me, “Do you mind?”

Truth was, I didn’t. I was actually kind of enjoying it. And I did have a rescue plan, if necessary. I checked the time: 7:25. Wherever the hell Pam was!

“So this friend of yours,” he asked with a coy half smile, “is she real or imaginary? Because if she’s imagi-nary, not to worry. I have several imaginary friends of my own back in Boston. We could set them up.”

“Oh, that would be nice.” I laughed. “But I’m afraid she’s quite real. At least she was this summer. She and her husband were in Spain with me and my …”

I was about to say my husband, of course, but something held me back. Though by this time I assumed he had taken note of the ring on my finger. Still, I couldn’t deny this was fun, sitting there with an attractive man who was paying me a little attention, still reeling from my argument with Dave.

Then he said, “I suspect there’s probably an imaginary husband back at home as well …”

“Right now”—I rolled my eyes and replied in a tone that was just a little digging—“I’m kind of wishing he was imaginary!” Then I shook my head. “That wasn’t nice. Tequila talking. We just had a little row last night. Subject for tonight with friend.”

“Ah. Sorry to hear. Just a newlywed spat, I’m sure,” he said, teasing. This time I was sure he was flirting.

“Yeah, right.” I chortled at the flattery. “Going on ten years.”

“Wow!” His eyes brightened in a way that I could only call admiring. “Well, I hope it’s okay if I say you surely don’t look it! I’m Curtis, by the way.”

I hesitated, thinking maybe I’d let things advance just a bit too far. Though I had to admit I wasn’t exactly minding it. And maybe in a way I was saying to my husband, So see, David, there are consequences to being a big, fat jerk!

“Wendy,” I said back. We shook hands. “But it sure would be nice to know where the hell Pam is. She was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.” I checked the time on my phone.

“Would it be all right if I order up another of whatever you’re drinking?” He raised his palms defensively. “Purely for the imaginary friend, of course …”

“Of course,” I said, playing along. “But no. One more of these and I’ll be up at that piano myself! And trust me, I wasn’t playing with anyone in the eighties … Anyway”—I shrugged, deadpan—“she only drinks imagi-nary vodka.”

Curtis grinned. “I’m acquainted with the bartender. Let me see what I can do.”

My iPhone vibrated. Pam, I was sure, announcing she was pulling up to the hotel now and for me to get a dirty martini going for her. But instead it read:

WEND, I’M SO SORRY. JUST CAN’T MAKE IT TONITE. WHAT CAN I SAY … ? I KNOW U NEED TO TALK. TOMORROW WORK?

Tomorrow? Tomorrow didn’t work. I was here. Now. And she was right, I did need to talk. And the last place I wanted to be right now was home. Will call, I wrote back, a little annoyed. I put down the phone. My eyes inevitably fell on Curtis’s. I’d already missed the 7:39.

“Sure, why don’t we do just that?” I nodded about that drink.

I’m not sure exactly what made me stay.

Maybe I was still feeling vulnerable from my fight with Dave. Or even a little annoyed at Pam, who had a habit of bagging out when I needed her most. I suppose you could toss in just a bit of undeniable interest in the present company.

Whatever it was, I did.

Knowing Dave was out for the night on business and that it was all just harmless anyway helped as well. And that there was a train every half hour. I could leave anytime I wanted.

We chatted some more, and Curtis said he was a freelance journalist here in town on a story. And I chuckled and told him that I was kind of in the same game too. That I’d actually worked for the Nassau County police in my twenties before going to law school for a year—having signed up after 9/11, after my brother, a NYPD cop himself, was killed—though I was forced to resign after a twelve-year-old boy was killed in a wrongful-death judgment. And that I’d written this novel about my experience, which was actually why I’d been in the city today at a self-publishing conference. That I’d been having a tough time getting it looked at by anyone, and that it likely wasn’t very good anyway.

“Care to read it?” I asked. I tapped the tote bag from my publishing conference. “Been lugging it around all day.”

“I would,” Curtis said, “but I’m afraid it’s not exactly my field.”

“Just joking,” I said. “So what is your field?”

He shrugged. “I’m a bit more into current events.”

I was about to follow up on that when the pianist finished her set. The crowded room gave her a warm round of applause. She got up and came over to the end of the bar, ordered a Perrier, and to my surprise, when it arrived, lifted it toward Curtis. “All warmed up, sugar.”

Curtis stood up. I looked at him wide-eyed. He shot me a slightly apologetic grin. “I did mention that I played …”

“You said a bit, for fun,” I replied.

“Well, you’ll be the judge. Look, I know you have a train to catch, and I don’t know if you’ll be around when I’m done”—he put out his hand—“but it was fun to chat with you, if you have to leave.”

“I probably should,” I said, glancing at the time. “It was nice to talk to you as well.”

“And best of luck,” he said, pointing as he backed away, “with that imaginary friend of yours.”

“Right! I’ll be sure to tell her!” I laughed.

He sat down at the piano, and I swiveled around, figuring I’d stick around a couple of minutes to hear how he played. But from the opening chords that rose magically from his fingers, just warming up, it was clear it was me he was playing when he coyly said he only played “a little.”

I was dumbstruck, completely wowed. The guy was a ten! He wasn’t just a dream to look at, and charming too—he played like he was totally at one with the instrument. He had the ease and polish of someone who clearly had been doing this from an early age. His fingers danced across the keyboard and the sounds rose as if on a cloud, then drifted back to earth as something beautiful. It had been a long time since goose bumps went down my arms over a guy.

Donna St. James leaned over. “You ever hear him before, honey?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“His father arranged a bunch of us back in the day. Sit back. You’re in for a treat.”

I did.

The first thing he played was this sumptuous, bluesy rendition of Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” and the handful of customers who were paying their checks, preparing to leave, started listening. Even the bartender was listening. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. Whatever my definition of sexy had been an hour ago, forget it—he was definitely rewriting it for me now.

I didn’t leave.

I just sat there, slowly nursing my margarita, growing more and more intoxicated, but not by the drink. By the time he segued into a sultry version of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” it was as if his soul had risen from that keyboard and knotted itself with mine.

Our eyes came together a couple of times, my smile communicating, Okay, so I’m impressed … The twinkle in his eye simply saying he was happy I was still there.

By the time he finished up with Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind,” goose bumps were dancing up and down my arms with the rise and fall of his fingers along the keys. With a couple of margaritas in me—and fifteen years from the last time anyone looked at me quite that way—the little, cautioning voice that only a few minutes back was going, Wendy, this is crazy, you don’t do this kind of thing, had gone completely silent.

And when our eyes seemed to touch after his final note and didn’t separate, not for a while, I knew, sure as I knew my own name, that I was about to do something I could never have imagined when I walked into the place an hour before. Something I’d never, ever done before.

CHAPTER TWO

Ten minutes later we were up in his room, my coat and bag strewn on the floor, one meaningless comment about the view before my breath seemed to jump out of my skin the second he touched me and backed me against the wall.

I was waiting for that voice inside to go, Hold it, just a second, Wendy. You know this isn’t right.

But what I seemed to want even more was for his hands to be all over me. Under my top. Beneath my skirt. Electrical shocks dancing all over my body. Places I hadn’t let another man touch me in years.

In a second his mouth was on mine, and I kissed him back just as eagerly. I felt the feel of his tongue dance against mine, just as I had watched his fingers dance along the keys. Then he traced a meandering path with his lips along my neck, my breaths leaping. His hand slid inside my skirt and down my rear, and I felt a shiver travel down my thighs and my heartbeat go out of control. My mind was like a dark vault, shutting out any thoughts of whether this was right or wrong.

I lifted my arms and let him pull me out of my sweater. I undid my thick, dark hair, letting it drape all over him, every cell inside me bursting with desire. He lifted me up against the blue, Japanese-wallpapered wall, my arms around his neck, and we knocked into the bamboo desk, sending the hotel directory onto the floor, not even stopping to go “Oops” or acknowledge it. Every time his lips brushed along my skin, my body seemed to explode, as if a live electrical cord was jumping around in it, amazed at what I was letting him do. Eyes locked on each other, he pulled my bra straps off my shoulders, my heart speeding up and getting stronger.

“There’s a perfectly good bed over there,” he said, his own breaths growing short and rapid.

“I know. There is.” Then I kissed him again and almost smothered him in my hair, feeling the zipper on the back of my skirt being drawn down, the leather wiggling down my thighs, the click and tug of his belt becoming undone …

A part of me was going, Yes, yes, take me over. The bed.

Another part went, The hell with the bed … I’m ready … here. Now …

Now.

And then something stopped.

Inside me. Like the emergency brake pulled on a train.

It was as if that one shuddering sound, the click of his belt buckle being undone, shot through me like cold water reviving an unconscious man, rocketing me back to earth.

Instantly awakening me to the reality of what I was doing.

It suddenly shot through me just how incredibly wrong this was. Wrong what I was letting him do. Wrong to even be here, in this room.

Wrong to betray a marriage I had worked so hard to make successful. To do this to someone who I knew I loved. And who loved me! How maybe I was only doing this to get back at him.

Just wrong.

And then this overwhelming feeling of dread wormed through me. Of how, when trust is broken, like that first crack in a dam about to give way, it only leads to more and more pressure against it until it can no longer hold. And then it bursts. Not just your marriage, but your whole life. Whatever was truthful in it. It all just starts to crumble and wash away. Everything. And how this was that first crack, what I was doing now. And how you couldn’t do it, Wendy … You just couldn’t unless you were willing to take that risk. That everything will go.

Which I wasn’t willing to take.

No matter how it may have felt downstairs. Or even a moment ago.

No, I didn’t want it all to burst.

Something came out of my mouth that a minute earlier would have been the farthest thing from my mind. From my desires.

“Stop,” I said.

Maybe a little under my breath at first; it could have been mistaken for a shudder or a sigh. I wasn’t even sure Curtis actually heard me. He was slowly weaving his tongue along my belly, getting lower, eliciting electric waves.

But then I said it again. Louder. “Please … stop. I can’t.” My hands went to his shoulders and I eased him slightly away.

This time he looked up.

“Curtis, I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

My skin was on fire and slick with sweat, and part of me was begging to just say, Fuck it, and let him carry me over to that bed. But the better part of me drew in the deepest, most determined breath I’d ever drawn.

“I can’t.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Curtis gave me an uncomprehending smile, slowly rising.

“No. I’m not. I know how this must seem. But I just can’t. I’m sorry. It’s just not right.” I blew out a breath. “Curtis, you’re a totally irresistible guy, and I know there’s a part of me that is going to one hundred percent regret this in an hour on the train …” I shook my head. “But I can’t do this with you. I thought it was okay. Even a minute ago it seemed so. But it’s not.” I let my hand fall to his face, and I looked into his confused, almost incredulous eyes. I didn’t know how he was going to react. Clearly, I’d played as much a part as he had in getting us up here.

The fire in my eyes was suddenly replaced by tears. “I’m so sorry. I just can’t.”

He blinked.

I wasn’t sure exactly what was going through him. Confusion. Frustration. Disbelief.

Absolutely disbelief.

And there was a moment when I admit it crossed my mind, Shit, Wendy, you’re up here with a guy you don’t know. No telling what he might do now.

But all he did was take a step back and nod, slowly, resignation seeming to drown the ardor. He glanced down, his jeans undone, my skirt down around my thighs, my black panties drawn. My hand now covering my breasts; breasts that only a moment ago I was willingly offering up to him.

“I’m totally embarrassed,” I said, putting my other hand in front of my face.

My face that was now flushed with shame.

He nodded. Thankfully, not the nod of someone who was about to do something crazy, which I guess, in another situation, could have been the case. More like the nod of someone caught by the total absurdity of what had just happened. Clothes strewn all over the floor. Pants down. Sweat covering both of us. Breathing heavily.

“No chance this is simply your particular spin on foreplay?” He smiled hopefully. A last-ditch plea.

“I wish it was.” I shrugged, pushing the hair out of my face. “It would probably make the whole situation a lot easier. Sorry.”

His nod seemed almost dazed. “Figured it was worth a check.”

He took the waist of my skirt and shimmied it back up, letting out a deep sigh, as if to say, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this.

“Thank you,” I said. “You’re really a saint for not making me feel like a total shit.”

“I’m not sure the word saint exactly applies right now.”

“You’re right.” I just stood there covering myself, bursting with embarrassment. I shrugged. “I think I need to straighten up.”

He nodded resignedly. “Bathroom’s over there.”

About as awkwardly as I’d felt since maybe back in college, I scurried around, covering myself up with my bra, and picked up my sweater off the floor, my bag that had spilled over on the floor, my boots. “I can assure you, I haven’t been in this position in about twenty years.”

Curtis just looked on and picked up his own shirt. “You can trust me, neither have I!”

With my bra and my sweater covering me, my handbag dangling from my arm, I turned at the bathroom door, grinning. “I suppose this isn’t a particularly good time to ask you again to take a look at my novel?”

“No,” Curtis said, unable to hold back his laugh. “Definitely not.”

“Thought as much.” I forced a rueful smile. “I’ll be out in a while.”

I closed the door behind me and took a deep, releasing breath as I looked in the mirror. My face was profusely blushing with shame. How had I let it get this far? I knew I could never tell anyone. Surely not Dave. Never. Not even Pam. No, this one was mine to deal with and try to rationalize. In a way I felt lucky. Lucky I had come to my senses when I did. Lucky Curtis was actually a decent guy. It could have been a whole lot worse.

Lucky I hadn’t done something that I’d look at with shame for the rest of my life.

I ran the cold water, wet a washcloth and pressed it to my flushed face. I put my arms back through my bra and started to brush out my hair, until I began to resemble a manageably put-together version of the person who had come up here a few minutes before—though still far too ashamed to even look at myself fully. I threw on my sweater and straightened myself out. Even dabbed on a little makeup and lip gloss. Then I took a breath. Okay, Wendy, now, you have to face him one more time and make your way home. And then go on with your life and pretend like this never even happened. And when Pam asks you about that cute guy at the bar you were texting about, it’s “What guy?” I merely finished my drink and caught the 7:39 and was home by Law & Order … right?

I blew out a final, steadying breath and steeled myself, when suddenly, over the running water, I heard something coming from the bedroom.

Voices. At first I just thought it was Curtis on the phone.

Then I realized I was hearing someone else’s voice as well. Another man. I turned the water down slightly and listened. This was already embarrassing enough. The last thing I needed was to face anyone else.

I cracked the bathroom door open and peeked out.

My heart came up my throat at what I saw.

There was another man in the room. Gray suit, white shirt open. Salt-and-pepper hair. The second I saw him I realized I’d seen him before. Downstairs in the lounge. He and another man, a black man, had been sitting around a table.

Except now he had a gun pointed at Curtis, who was on the bed.

I instantly froze, then drew back inside. I didn’t know what to do. I was worried he would hear the running water. He’d see my jacket and shoes. He’d have to know I was here. Years before, I’d been on the Nassau County police force, but that was basically as a cadet, a lifetime ago. Eleven years. God forbid he did something terrible to Curtis. His next move would be to come in here for me!

“Pick it up!” I heard the man order him.

Holding my heart together, I peered back out.

He’d tossed a second gun onto the bed. It landed next to Curtis, who stared at it with growing terror.

“I said fucking pick it up!” the intruder said again, leveling his own gun menacingly.

“No, I’m not going to pick it up,” Curtis said, his voice in between panic and defiance. “I know what you’re going to do. You just want to make it look like I drew on you …” He pushed the gun away and it rolled to the edge of the bed and onto the floor. “You’re going to shoot me, no matter what I do?”

The intruder just looked at the gun and shook his head. “Doesn’t matter anyway … This is for Gillian, asshole.”

He pulled the trigger. My eyes bolted wide.

There was a loud, muffled pop, and Curtis’s body jumped off the bed with the impact. He tried to scream “No!” Then there was a second pop, and to my horror, Curtis jerked and then went limp.

I drew back inside, muffling a terrified scream. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen.

As I stared through the slit in the doorway, it was clear—a hundred percent clear, in that horrifying split second—that he had to know I was in there. His next move would be to come for me. My heart started to race uncontrollably. What the hell could I do? The bathroom door seemed to open on its own. My eyes locked on the gun on the floor, only a few feet from me. Old instincts kicked in, instincts I hadn’t felt in years. I stepped out of the bathroom and picked it up. The intruder had gone over to check on Curtis’s body.

I raised the gun at him, two-handed, shouting, “I’m an ex-cop! Put the gun down. Put your hands in the air!”

I hadn’t even held a gun in years, and never to someone’s face. In this kind of situation. My hands were visibly shaking.

The man just looked at me and put up his palms defensively, as if to say, Slow down, okay, honey …

But inwardly, I saw him sizing up the situation: My nerves. His chances. How quickly he could raise his gun. I’d just watched him commit a cold-blooded killing. I knew then he wasn’t about to let me call the cops on him.

“Lady, you have no idea what you stepped into…”

I leveled the gun at his chest. “I said lay the gun down and put your hands in the air!”

That’s when I saw it. A realization etched into his face. Something he knew and I didn’t. Like the situation had suddenly shifted, his way and not mine. And then in horror I realized just what it was. The gun I was holding had been a plant. To make it look like Curtis had drawn on him first. He would never have risked Curtis taking it and using it on him.

The safety was still on!

Frantically I turned the gun on its side and found the lever. I thumbed it forward, just as the killer took a step to the side and leveled his gun at me.

I screamed and pulled the trigger, the recoil knocking me backward.

He staggered back, continuing to hold out the gun.

I pulled it again.

The first shot struck him squarely in the chest. I saw a burst of crimson on his shirt, hurtling him back against the wall. The next shot hit him in the throat, his hand darting there as he slowly slid, blood smearing against the wallpaper, his gun clattering against the floor.

He was scarily still.

There was this awful, heart-stopping silence. I just stood there, an acrid, all-too-familiar smell filling up the room. My heart pounding like a boom box turned all the way up. Wendy, what have you done? Frozen, I stared at him in disbelief. The guy didn’t move a muscle, the flower of blood widening on his white shirt.

Oh my God, Wendy, what have you just fucking done?

Dazed, I put the gun back on the bed and rushed over to Curtis, who was clearly dead, the smoky, dark eyes that had so intrigued me at the bar just minutes before now glassy and fixed. You have no idea what you stepped into, the intruder had said. Okay, so what … what have I stepped into? What have you done, Curtis, to deserve this? I tried to think, but my mind was jumbled and confused.

My heart still racing, I ran over and checked the man on the floor. You didn’t have to be an MD to see he was dead as well, his cold, gray eyes glazed over and inert; the pool of blood on his chest continuing to spread. You killed him, Wendy … I’d pulled a trigger once before on the job, and it had changed my life. But not like this. Not at point-blank range. Not with my life on the line. I thought, What the hell do I do now? Call security? The police? You just killed someone, Wendy … I knew I didn’t have any choice. I’d just watched the son of a bitch kill Curtis in cold blood. He was about to shoot me too. I was lucky to even be alive.

Anyone would see it was clearly self-defense.

But then the reality of where I was swelled up inside me.

No. I couldn’t do that at all! Call the police. That was the last thing I could do. I was in the hotel room of a complete stranger. A place I absolutely shouldn’t have been. How would I possibly explain that? Not just to the police, even if I could convince them of what had happened.

But to my husband. To Dave. To our kids!

That I was up here to have sex with a guy I’d just met at the bar when the whole thing happened.

My whole life would be torn apart.

My eyes fell on the intruder. Who are you? Why were you following Curtis? What were you up here to do? Leaning over him, I saw he had an earphone in his ear. Which suddenly unnerved me even more, realizing that there was likely an accomplice somewhere. Probably in the hotel at that moment!

Possibly even right outside.

If he has any idea what had just happened in here …

Terrified, I took the earphone out and held it to my ear. I heard a voice on the other end.

“Ray? Ray, what’s going on up there? Answer me, Ray, are you all right?”

His jacket had fallen open, and I saw an ID folder in the breast pocket. I started thinking, What if he was security? Or maybe even the police? What then?

I was suddenly encased in sweat.

I opened the ID folder and stared. And whatever panic or fear I had felt up to that moment became just a dry run for what was rippling through me now.

I was staring at a badge. But not from hotel security.

It read:

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY.

CHAPTER THREE

My heart, which to that point had been acting as if a live wire were loose in my chest, went instantly still, as if the power had been cut. The agent’s ID fell out of my hand.

I’d just killed a government agent.

Not just an agent—Raymond Hruseff. From the Department of fucking Homeland Security!

Who only seconds before I had watched commit a cold-blooded murder and then try to frame someone else. And who would have surely done the same to me had that gun not happened to be close by.

My throat went completely dry.

You have no idea what you stepped into, Hruseff had said to me. I turned to Curtis and wanted to shake him from the dead. Tell me … tell me, damn it, what did I stumble into? What the hell did you do?

I knew I had only seconds to decide what to do. But, clearly, staying here wasn’t an option.

I found a duplicate room key in the agent’s jacket pocket, which was no doubt how he’d gotten in. He had icily put two bullets into Curtis right in front of my eyes. He was in the process of trying to make it seem as if Curtis was the one about to shoot. Even more troubling, when I identified myself as an ex-cop, instead of laying down his weapon and putting his hands in the air—and identifying himself, standard operating procedure—he’d made a move to shoot me. Clearly, he wasn’t up here on official business.

What I’d stumbled into was an execution.

And I knew if the person on the other end of that earphone happened to find me in this room, I’d be as good as Curtis.

Wendy, you have to get the hell out of here now!

I hurried over to the bed, wiped down the gun I’d used to shoot Hruseff, and placed it back on the bed. I did the same with the bathroom doorknob and everything else I’d touched. I took my coat. Only a minute and a half or so had passed since the actual shooting. The shots might have attracted people’s attention. There might already be a crowd gathered outside the room.

The guy’s partner could be on his way up!

I grabbed my bag and my leather jacket, which had fallen off the desk chair and onto the floor, and saw Curtis’s cell phone next to his laptop. I threw his phone into my bag, thinking that down the line I might well need something to prove my innocence, and I had no idea in hell who the guy even was.

I didn’t even know if Curtis was his real name!

I hurried over to the door. It was 8:41. It seemed like an eternity had passed since the shooting, but it had only been about two minutes. I prayed that people hadn’t been inside their rooms. That they would be out to dinner somewhere, or at a play, or at the fucking Knicks game for all I cared. Just somewhere! I put on my floppy cap and covered my face with my scarf as best I could, my blood pulsing with adrenaline. Collecting myself, I opened the door a notch and looked out. Thank God, the only people I saw in the hallway were an elderly couple heading to the elevators at the far end. Still, I didn’t think I could risk it. I needed another way out of the hotel. There had to be an emergency stairwell somewhere.

I stepped out, averting my face from any possible cameras, but just as I headed down the hall in the opposite direction from the elevators, someone bolted around the corner, behind me.

I spun.

It was the black guy who I had seen with the dead agent down in the lounge. Who had to be the person I’d just heard on the radio.

Our eyes locked and he seemed to recognize me. Then he reached inside his jacket for his gun.

Oh my God, Wendy …

“Federal agent!” he yelled. “Stop and put your hands in the air!”

I stood, frozen. A voice inside me shouted that a federal agent had just ordered me to stop.

But another, far more convincing, told me, If you do, this guy might kill you, Wendy! You just watched his partner murder a man. They were clearly here for something dirty. You can’t chance it. You have to get out of here now!

“He’s in there!” Backing down the hall, I pointed toward the hotel room door. “Your partner. He’s been shot.”

Then I started to run.

“Stop. Now!” I heard him shout again from behind me.

I didn’t. Ten feet away, the hallway turned to the right and I flung myself around the corner just as a bullet whizzed by my head and slammed into the wall.

I screamed.

I prayed that he wouldn’t come right after me but instead would check on his partner. Who could be bleeding out. Or even dead. Which hopefully would buy me a few seconds.

Or maybe he’d radio a third person. Down in the lobby. I had no idea how many were even involved.

I sprinted down the long hallway, not sure what he was doing behind me. I knew that even if I screamed bloody murder and pounded frantically on the doors; even if people came out of their rooms to see what was going on and I was somehow spared; even if the police believed my story of what actually had happened in there, I would still have to face my husband and tell him what I’d done. Either way, my life would come crashing down.

I raced around another corner, no idea if there was even a stairwell there. Up ahead, I saw a dimly lit sign that read Emergency. Thank God! I barreled through the door without looking behind, flew down the fire stairs as fast as my boots would take me—seven floors, my heart racing almost as frenetically as my feet. I had no idea what awaited me at the bottom. Hotel security? The police? With guns drawn?

Maybe a third agent?

I made it down the seven floors in what seemed like seconds. Above me, I heard the echo of the door opening and someone shouting down the stairwell. Loud footsteps coming after me.

Oh, God, Wendy, hurry …

Almost out of breath, I pushed through the security door on the ground floor. It opened to an unfamiliar part of the lobby, and I let out a gasp of relief that no one was around. Composing myself, I got my bearings and hurried toward the main entrance. An hour ago, I had come through it, a marital spat with my husband the most pressing thing on my mind.

Now I was a witness to a murder. Now I had killed someone myself.

Now I was just hoping to stay alive.

I buried my face in my jacket and scarf and hurried through the revolving doors, the brown-uniformed doorman pushing me through with an accommodating wave. “Have a nice night.”

I gave him a quick wave in return, not knowing what else to do.

Outside, I didn’t know which way to turn. I wasn’t sure how close behind me the agent was. Park Avenue is a two-way street, bisected by a divider in the middle. The closest cross street was Thirty-Eighth, but the block to Madison Avenue was straight and long, and if the guy came out and saw me turn, there would be no place for me to hide.

Grand Central station was four blocks north. Even at this hour, it would be busy with commuter traffic and offer plenty of places to hide. I knew I’d be safe there.

I buried my head in my down coat and ran across to the other side of the street, heading north. I clung to the dark cover of the high-rise buildings.

A block away I glanced back and saw the agent who’d been chasing me come out of the hotel. He looked up and down. I pressed myself against a large, bronze sculpture in the courtyard of an office building on Fortieth Street. My heart was ricocheting off my ribs, and I was praying he hadn’t seen me. He looked in all directions, gesturing in frustration, and spoke into a radio. I didn’t move a muscle. He looked around again; he seemed to be staring directly at me.

I went rigid.

Then finally he went back in.

I think I exhaled so loudly in relief that a person a block away would have turned at the sound. I was in tears, tears from the thought of what I had just witnessed. At what I’d just done. Not knowing if I was safe, or about to be implicated in a double murder? Or if my family was about to fall apart? I knew I had to bring this to the police. But I also knew that then everything would spill out. Everything! And they would likely just bring me back to the hotel and hand me over to the very people who had just tried to kill me.

All I could think of was to just get home. To the person I trusted most in the world. If this was going to come out, he was damn well going to hear it from my lips, and not from the police. I had no idea what I would say to him. Or how he would react. I only knew that together, we’d figure out the right thing to do. How could I possibly hold it inside? A dark, shameful secret that would haunt me the rest of my life? Every time I looked at my husband.

Every time I looked at myself in the mirror.

Not just what I’d done to a federal agent …

But having that second drink. Going up to that room.

Everything!

CHAPTER FOUR

It only took about five minutes to make it the couple of blocks to Grand Central.

There were a couple of policemen stationed at the entrance. I thought about stopping them and telling them what happened. But I just ran past.

I saw on the large schedule screen in the Grand Concourse that there was a 9:11 train back to Pelham. That was only five minutes from now.

I headed down to Track 24. Before going underground, I called the house. It didn’t surprise me that there was no answer. Dave had a business dinner with some prospective new partners. When our voice mail came on, I hung up and tried his cell. No answer again. This time I left a harried message, trying to calm my voice as best I could: “Honey, I’m sorry about what happened last night. I’m on the nine-eleven. I’m looking forward to seeing you at home. Please, I need to talk to you about something. I love you.”

What else mattered now?

The ride home was the most nerve-racking half hour of my life. As soon as we got out of the tunnel, I checked Google News on my iPhone to see if the story had hit. So far it hadn’t. I looked in the faces of the people sitting across from me. Just regular commuters. A black woman with her young daughter who was playing a handheld electronic game. A businessman heading home from a late night at the office. A couple of loud twenty-somethings. Could they see it on me? Was it all over my face? Could they hear it in the pounding of my heart? What I’d done!

Pelham is the second stop in Westchester County. It was a quiet, upper-middle-class town tucked in between Mount Vernon and New Rochelle. I’d left my Audi SUV at the station. We live in Pelham Manor, an upscale neighborhood only a couple of minutes from the town, in an old Tudor on a wooded half acre with a carriage-house garage, just two blocks from the Long Island Sound. Dave was a partner in a small advertising company that was looking to merge with a larger one. That’s what his meeting tonight was about. It would be a huge moment for him, for us both, if it all went through. And it could mean a little money for us, which we surely could use. We lived well: We had a ski house in Vermont; we belonged to a nice country club, ate out pretty much whenever we wanted. But not so well that it wasn’t a struggle to pay full tuition for the kids in college and go out west, skiing in Snowmass with friends once a year.

All of a sudden, everything seemed threatened.

I drove home, my mind a daze, and went in through the garage. Once in my kitchen, surrounded by all our familiar things, I actually felt myself start to feel safe, for the first time since the incident. Dave wasn’t back yet. I threw off my coat, pulled off my boots, and heaved myself into a chair in the den. I had to decide what to do.

It all seemed like a dream to me—a haunting, nightmarish one. Had it all actually happened? I’d witnessed the execution of a defenseless man. I’d killed a government agent in self-defense. A rogue agent maybe. One who was about to kill me. But if I came forward, I’d probably destroy my life. A woman in the hotel room of a man she had met at the bar only an hour before? Who guiltily fled the scene? Over and over I replayed the seconds leading up to my firing that gun: the intruder shooting Curtis without even blinking. The second gun pushed off the edge of the bed within my reach. Screaming at Hruseff that I was an ex-cop and to put down his gun. Then the calculating expression that came over his face and the panic in my chest as he raised his gun toward me.

I’d had no choice. I knew I would have been dead if I hadn’t pulled that trigger.

But how could I ever explain it? To the police? Or to my husband?

He could walk through that door at any time. That this horrible thing had happened … that I was in a hotel room to screw some guy. Would he even believe that I had stopped it? That I had come to my senses? Would it even matter? Everything would fall apart. My marriage. My relationship with the kids, whom I’d basically raised and whom I adored.

Our trust.

My whole fucking life.

Sorry, honey, hope dinner went well with the prospective new partners and all, but while you were having salmon tartare at the Gotham Bar and Grill, your pretty little wife just killed a government agent after she was about to fuck a …

Hot flashes running all over me suddenly made it feel like it was a hundred degrees.

I got up, went into the bedroom, pulled off my clothes, and hopped into the shower, trying to wash off the oily film of guilt and complicity. It felt good, almost freeing, to be clean again. I was in my robe, in the kitchen having a cup of tea, when I heard the automatic garage door go up and then the back door open as Dave came in.

“How did it go?” I asked, my heart beating nervously. The first words we’d said to each other all day.

“Good. It went well.” He nodded. At first a bit stiffly. He’d worn his Zegna cashmere blazer and the green striped tie I’d bought for him last Christmas. He looked a little bit like Woody Harrelson, only handsomer, in my view. Then he grinned. “Actually, it went really, really well. I’m starting to think this might work out.”

I ran over and buried myself in his arms.

Did I say that this was my second marriage? For both of us. Dave’s first was with a magazine editor who developed a serious prescription pill problem, and he got custody of the kids. Mine was just a youthful mistake at twenty-one that lasted a year. We’d both put in a lot to make this one work. And for the most part it had.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said, patting my shoulders. He could feel me shuddering against him, and I couldn’t stop crying. “Jeez, Pam must’ve been one hell of a support system …”

I couldn’t let go of him.

“Hey, what’s going on? This isn’t like you, Wend. Look …” He stroked my hair. “I know we have to talk. I know I said some things last night. Maybe this meeting was on my mind, I don’t know …”

“No, that’s not it. That doesn’t matter.” I looked at him and wiped my eyes. “Dave, something happened in the city tonight. You have to listen to me. I’ve stepped into a nightmare.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I didn’t know where to begin, so I just blurted it out.

“Dave, I shot someone tonight. I killed him.”

“What? What do you mean you shot someone, Wendy? What are you talking about?”

“Dave, please just listen to me!”

It was jumbled and rambling, and it felt like knives were stabbing me when I got to the part I dreaded most. Which was going up to that room.

“I don’t know why I did it, David.” I sat on a stool at the kitchen island holding a tissue, shaking my head. “I was just so angry from the things you said to me last night. Then Pam didn’t show up. This guy came up to the bar …”

It took everything I had to get the words out. I watched Dave’s face twitch in surprise at first, as he realized what I was telling him, then go blank, maybe waiting for the part when I said I was joking, which never came. Then it simply slackened with the most confused, heartbreaking look.

“Dave, I swear to you, nothing really happened between us up there.” I reached out and took his hand. “I give you my word. I stopped it before it really got anywhere. I was just so angry, David—”

“You went up to this guy’s room?” He stared at me shell-shocked, and pulled his hand away. “To do what? To screw someone, Wendy?”

“Sweetheart, I never meant to hurt you.” I latched back onto him, my heart almost falling off a cliff. “My relationship with you means more to me than anything in the world, and I realize what I’ve done. But that’s not it! That’s not all I’m trying to tell you, David. Something else happened up there. Something even more important.”

“You shot someone?” His face screwed up in confusion. “What the hell did he do to you, Wendy?” His concern was mixed with anger and accusation. He searched my face and arms as if looking for signs of a struggle.

“Nothing. He didn’t do anything to me, Dave. The guy’s dead. He was shot. By someone else. Someone else came into the room—as I was in the bathroom. Freshening up.”

“Freshening up?” This time the edge of accusation in his voice was clear.

“Dave, just listen to me! The guy was killed. Thank God I was in there, or I’d be dead too.” I took him through what happened. Hearing the killer’s voice. Curtis pushing the gun off the bed. Watching him be killed.

Picking up the gun and having no other choice than to do what I did.

My tears cleared and now there was only the deepest urgency in my eyes. “The guy was going to shoot me, David. I identified myself. I told him I was an ex-cop. I gave him every chance to put his weapon down. He didn’t. What he did do was raise it up to me. I shot him, David. I had no choice. He would have shot me!”

I drew myself close to him. I needed to feel his support so badly. Stiffly, he put his arm around me as my heart pattered against him. Then I finally felt him draw me close. Hesitantly. His arms seemed remote and strange.

“I don’t even know how to react to this, Wendy. What did the police say?”

I shook my head against him. “I never went to the police, Dave. I couldn’t.”

“You shot a murderer in self-defense. You’d just watched him kill someone, right? No one would question it.”

“That’s not all that happened, Dave. I was scared. I realized my life was about to fall apart. Because of where I was. I just wanted to get home to you.” I lifted my face. “But that’s not all … The guy I shot wasn’t just a murderer. I checked him out and saw his ID after. He was a government agent, Dave. He was from Homeland Security.”

The rest I told him as if in one long, rambling sentence. How I ran from the hotel room, straight into the killer’s partner. How he shot at me, and I had to run. “I fled down the fire stairs, David. I’m lucky to be alive.”

“Oh God, Wendy …” I sensed both sympathy and disbelief in his voice. I didn’t know if I would believe it if he was telling it to me.

“I don’t know what I stumbled into, Dave. But whatever it was, it was a murder. And something these people wanted to cover up. If I went to the police, they would have brought me back to the hotel, to the very people who were trying to kill me. I’ve never been so afraid in my life. All I could think of was getting back here to you.” I cupped his face. “I knew whatever we had to do, we could do it together. Honey, I’m so sorry for what I did. I never meant for this to happen.”

“But it did. It did happen.” I could see he didn’t know how to react.

“Yes, it did.” I nodded guiltily.

“Does anyone know who you are?”

“I don’t think so. But it’s going to come out. There may be security cameras. And Pam knows I was there. I texted her about this guy. Besides, I killed someone…”

He blew out his cheeks and nodded somberly. “We don’t have any choice but to go to the police.”

“I know.” Though the thought of it filled me with dread. A married woman up in a strange hotel room—to screw some guy she’d only met an hour earlier. Then shooting a government agent and fleeing … Would it be seen as just trying to cover up what I had done? I thought of my family and stepkids. It was all going to come out. “I’m scared, Dave.” I kind of fell against him.

Again he wrapped his arms around me with a lukewarm squeeze. “I know you’re scared. We can let someone intercede. A lawyer. There’s Harvey Baum from the club.” He’d handled Dave’s divorce. “Or Hal …”

“Who the hell is Hal?”

“Hal Pritchard. He’s been advising us on the deal.”

My mind suddenly flashed to it. Given the sordid publicity, who the hell would want to merge with them now? “Dave, I’m so sorry I got you into this. I know how important everything was tonight.” I hugged him. “I can’t believe this has happened.”

“We’ll get through this,” he said. “They’ll have to understand. The rest … ” He looked at me measuredly. It was clear what he meant. “The rest we’ll have to deal with later. There are gonna be some things we have to talk over. Okay …”

“Okay.” I nodded against his chest. I shut my eyes, as if I could wish this whole nightmare away.

“This other guy,” Dave said. He pulled himself away from me. “The one who you …”

I knew perfectly who he meant. The one I went up there with. “Curtis.”

He shrugged. “What do you know about him? Who is he? What did he do?”

“I don’t know anything about him, Dave. I just met him at the bar.” I winced, hearing just how that sounded. “He just sat down, while I was waiting for Pam. I don’t even know if Curtis is his real name. Wait a second, I took his phone …”

“You took his phone?”

“From the room. I thought I might need it. To help me prove what happened.”

I ran up to the bedroom and came back with my bag. Dave had turned on the television. It was almost 11:00 P.M. “This had to have made the news …”

I dug around in my bag, searching for his BlackBerry, and found it, at the bottom next to my iPhone.

I put the bag down and a weird feeling came over me. Something didn’t seem right.

Like something was missing.

I sifted through my purse, finding my makeup kit, my e-reader, trying to figure out what it was. Then it hit me.

My tote bag. With my program and some materials from the conference. It wasn’t with my bag or on the kitchen island, where I put things down when I come in.

A feeling of dread came over me.

“What’s wrong?” Dave asked.

“Something’s not here.” I went out the kitchen door to the garage and searched around my Audi. It wasn’t there either. I recalled I’d had it at the bar. I’d even joked to Curtis about it. And I remembered taking it up to the room. I’d thrown it on the floor along with my bag and coat. We weren’t exactly focused on that then. But in my haste, I must’ve left it.

For the third time that night my insides turned to a block of ice.

I came back in, my face no doubt white. Dave looked at me. “What’s missing?”

“My program. From the conference I went to today. It was in a tote bag. Along with some other stuff. It’s not here …”

“Our life is falling apart. Who gives a shit about the fucking tote bag, Wendy?”

“You don’t understand … it’s not the program.” I could have cared less about my goddamn program.

It was that it said Wendy Gould. Pelham, New York on the printed label on the cover.

It could identify me.

My heart clutched in horror. The people looking for me, who had tried to kill me twice to keep what I had seen quiet …

They probably had my name right now!

CHAPTER SIX

“Dave, we have to leave,” I said, urgency crackling in my voice.

“We will. I just want to see if it’s public yet. Then I’ll call Harvey—”

“Dave, you don’t understand. I think they know who I am. We have to get out of here now!”

That was the moment the news came on. The lead-in sent a shiver down me: “A shooting in a room at a posh midtown hotel, and two people are dead.”

I watched in horror.

The reporter came on and described how an unspecified victim had been shot in his room at the “posh” Hotel Kitano, along with a second victim—details still unclear—“who was rumored to be a possible government agent.”

She said that a third person was being sought. A woman, who might have been in that room when it all happened, and who had fled the scene.

My stomach wound into a knot. I was that third person.

The person they were looking for was me!

The newscast went on. By this time they’d have found the tote bag. So they had to know who that third person was. More than three hours had passed. If the police knew, why weren’t they already here?

The only possible answer hit me. And it didn’t make me feel any better. If the NYPD had it, they’d have been here by now. The neighborhood would be lit up with flashing lights. They wouldn’t have even mentioned a third person on the news …

They would already have me in custody.

But if the people who had killed Curtis had found it first, they’d want to keep the whole thing quiet. They might not hand it over so quickly. They’d be just as scared that I’d be in the hands of the police and divulge what I had seen, which they’d want to cover up. Which meant …

I felt my throat go dry.

Which meant they might be heading here themselves, at that very second. To finish the job.

Their role in all this could remain secret as long as I stayed away from the police.

Or was dead.

Suddenly I became encased in sweat. We weren’t safe here. We had to get out of here now.

“Dave, I’m going to get dressed. It’s not safe to be here. You wanted to go to the police. So let’s go! Let’s just get out of here now!”

I ran to the bedroom and threw on some jeans and a fleece pullover. Back in the kitchen I grabbed my bag and Curtis’s phone. We headed into the garage and climbed into Dave’s Range Rover, me behind the wheel.

I opened the garage door and turned on the ignition.

Dave put his hand on my arm. “We’ll make this all work out, Wendy …”

“I know,” I said. “Thanks.” I started to back out.

Suddenly a bright light enveloped us from behind. Headlights from a vehicle at the end of our driveway.

“Hands in the air!” someone yelled. “Out of the car! Now!”

I spun around in fear.

It was over. The police were here. I let out a deep breath, ready to comply. Thinking what I was going to say.

Then I saw that the light was from a black SUV. A single SUV.

“It’s them,” I said. I grabbed my husband’s arm, terror running through me. “Oh, Jesus, Dave, they’re here.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Someone stepped out of the passenger’s side of the SUV and cautiously approached us along the circular drive, his gun extended from the top of the semicircular drive.

Dave turned to me. “Wendy, you said these people were from the government. I’ll talk to them.”

That’s when I looked out the window and saw the same black agent who had shot at me at the hotel perched behind the SUV’s open driver’s door.

My heart almost exploded in fear.

“David, we can’t go out there!” I seized his arm. “These aren’t the police. You heard what I told you. They’re here to kill us!”

“Kill us?” His tone was as skeptical as it was uncomprehending. “Wendy, we have to go out there. I’ll call Harvey. I promise, I’m not gonna let them take you without knowing where—” He started to open the door.

“No! Don’t!” I screamed, reaching over to him. “You’re not going out there, Dave!”

There was no time to convince him. I threw the car into reverse and floored it. With a roar, the Range Rover lurched out of the garage and shot right at the oncoming agent, who dove out of the way.

I gunned it toward the SUV.

“Close the door!” I screamed at Dave, twisting around to see behind me. “Close the fucking door!”

He couldn’t. We smashed full force into the grill of the government SUV, Dave’s door flying open. I was jolted out of my seat, my head hitting against the sun roof. The black agent disappeared. I didn’t know if I had hit him or not. I didn’t care! I had to remind myself that these weren’t the good guys—they were covering up a cold-blooded murder. That I was the one trying to save our lives.

Two shots rang out. Not loud cracks. More like muted thuds. Suddenly the rear windshield splintered and my heart almost clawed up my throat. Dave looked at me, his gaze bewildered as mine was fearful and panicked.

If there had been any doubt what these people were here for, it was clear now.

I jammed the car into drive and floored it again, this time forward. Dave’s door was still open, the car’s wheels screeching.

“Wendy!” he shouted. I hit the gas and steered toward the far entrance of our driveway.

By then, the first agent had risen to his feet. He ran ahead to block our way out, his weapon trained on us.

I bore down on him, prepared to run him over.

This time he leaped out of the way on Dave’s side, firing as we sped by. “No!” Another shot thudded into us from behind, the rear windshield shattering. Another hit the side as I turned.

“Dave, close the fucking door!”

He reached for it in desperation, bullets flying into the car. The agent was emptying his gun. I heard a horrifying “Oooof” over the rain of glass and the engine roar. I looked at my husband. His head pitched slightly forward and he had a glazed look in his eye, and I realized in panic what had happened before I saw the blood flower on his chest and his hand drop limply to his side.

“Oh my God, David!” I screamed in horror.

Even as I rambled over our front circle, our eyes met for an instant. Our last instant. I’m not sure if there was anything in them anymore, just a kind of blankness and futility, as if he was somehow letting me down. It was a look I’ll carry with me the rest of my life.

Frantically, I lunged for him, as we bounced over the Belgian block, the force of the turn pitching him to the side. And then Dave slid, fell out of my grasp, and onto the pavement like some lifeless sack of grain, as I turned the corner of the driveway onto our street.

I slammed on the brakes and stared at him in horror. “David!”

I knew he was dead. The glassy eyes staring blankly up at me. And dead only because of what I’d done. Staring up at me, like some disturbing image I’d seen on a news clip, someone else’s husband, twisted, inert, two dark blotches on his chest.

Another shot pinged through the car from behind me, and I saw Agent Number One running toward me. I knew if I stayed even a moment longer, I’d be dead as well. I looked one last time at Dave.

My heart was crumbling.

I hit the gas, the Range Rover lunging forward. I sped away, tears flooding my eyes. I drove down my dark, sleeping street, anguish tearing at me. Disbelief. I told myself that this was only some horrifying, nightmarish dream and screamed at myself to wake up from it. Now. Wake up!

Please.

But as I sped through the darkened town, cutting down side streets and weaving through a parking lot only a resident would know to make certain I wasn’t being followed, not knowing where I was driving, only that I had to get away, as far away from this as I could; I knew with certainty it was no dream.

Oh, Dave …

And I saw clearly how it was all going to look once it became public. That I’d killed a government agent in a panic after being caught in a stranger’s hotel room, and now, having escaped the law enforcement agents who had come for me, I’d gotten my husband killed too. How, after an argument the night before, I’d betrayed him. I could just hear Pam on some news clip tomorrow reinforcing the whole thing. How down I had sounded. How desperate I’d been to meet her at the hotel.

And even if the police did somehow believe me about how the shootings there went down, how would the people who did this ever let me be, having witnessed what I had? How would I ever feel safe again, knowing they had to cover this up too?

They would never let me be free.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I drove.

I’m not sure for how long or how far. Until I felt far enough away that I was certain no one was following me. Every set of headlights that flashed in my mirror sent a shiver of dread rattling through me. Several times I was sure I’d been found. Several times I froze, rigid with fear, waiting for the inevitable siren or flashing light.

But it didn’t come.

I came to my senses on the Hutchinson River Parkway, heading north. A few miles up, I merged onto 684, just getting as far away as I could. Then Route 22 into Dutchess County. I finally stopped, from sheer exhaustion and the throes of grief taking over me. That time of night, I was practically the only car on the dark road. I pulled into a dark, closed-up gas station and cut my lights. It was going on 1:00 A.M. My heart had barely slowed a beat since the shooting.

I started to sob. Deep, shame-filled sobs, everything starting to come up all over again, my forehead slumped on the wheel. My body convulsing. Over and over, I pictured Dave’s empty face staring up at me. That final, befuddled look in his eye, how he didn’t understand. How could he? His final word to me simply a helpless plea. “Wendy!”

And I knew he was dead only because of me. Because of what I’d done. How I’d betrayed him.

I screamed to no one, “Why did I ever go up to that room?” And no one answered. Tears cascaded down my cheeks.

I reached across the seat for my bag, fumbling for something I could use to dry my eyes.

Instead I found Curtis’s phone.

An unstoppable urge came over me to hurl it as far away as I possibly could. Since I’d set eyes on him, it had only brought me hell. I opened the door, took the phone in my hand, and went to fling it into the darkness.

Then I stopped. Suddenly it occurred to me this might be the one thing that could help me.

There had to be something in it that would show what Curtis was into. Why he was being targeted. Who his killers were, and why they wanted him dead. What had Hruseff said? “This is for Gillian …”

It might well be my only chance to find out. I knew in the morning I’d be a hunted woman, sought for a connection to one murder and complicity in another. And that even I, if I looked at the situation through impartial eyes, would likely be convinced I was guilty. Until I knew why they wanted Curtis dead, I’d be a wanted woman. I’d never see my children again. I’d be running for the rest of my life.

I turned the phone on, the BlackBerry powering to life. I scrolled through his recent e-mails and texts, scanning for something from Hruseff or from someone named Gillian. I didn’t find either. What I did find out was Curtis’s last name—Kitchner. CBKitchner@gmail.com being his e-mail account. I looked over his messages. From friends. His family. His Facebook account. I looked under his contacts for a Gillian. Nothing. I didn’t know where to begin.

I was about to put it aside when something made me look through his photos. Maybe it was simply the worry that once I put aside his phone I had no idea what my next move would be. I didn’t know in which direction to drive. Maybe I was just so desperate to find out anything I could about him and what he might have done.

I saw his life: with friends at bars, a team photo of what looked like a rugby match. Then some in rugged terrain—Curtis with some soldiers in combat gear. It looked like Iraq or Afghanistan to me. He and a woman I took to be his sister at a table with what I took to be his parents. They were all smiling and happy. They probably had no idea yet they had lost a son.

Then something caught my eye. A woman. The last picture he had taken. She was pretty and small, dark-featured, with full, dark hair pulled back. I noticed what appeared to be cuts and bruises on her face, and as I enlarged the shot, I saw that she was in a bed, wearing a green hospital gown. There was a date—five days ago. The only identification was simply an initial, L.

A shiver traveled down my spine.

The dark complexion. The oval shape of the face. Anyone might have easily made the mistake. Anyone who had been watching us … perhaps from the hotel bar.

I was staring at someone who looked a lot like me.

LAURITZIA

CHAPTER NINE

“Jamie, Taylor. Can you move forward, please?”

Lauritzia Velez got the kids’ attention as they waited for the elevator on the third floor of the Westchester Mall.

Not her kids, actually. The Bachmans’. Lauritzia had only taken care of them these past two years. Taylor was nine, and was texting her friend Cameron, all excited about running into Michael Goldberg at the Apple store in the mall, and Jamie, eleven, was already completely obsessed with the new PlayStation 3 game he had just bought with a birthday gift certificate.

“You know, when we get back home, that game is on the shelf until you finish your homework.”

“But it’s Peyton Manning,” Jamie muttered, his eyes still glued to the box.

“And you too, Miss Fancy Fingers.” She pushed Taylor forward, the girl’s fingers continuing to text at warp speed.

A heavyset woman carrying two shopping bags next to Lauritzia smiled at her sympathetically, as if to say, It’s no use. I’ve got my own.

Lauritzia was twenty-four, dark-haired, with pretty dark-brown eyes that were the color of the hills at dusk where she was from, and she had worked for Harold and Roxanne Bachman since she had moved here from Mexico two years earlier. For the first time, she’d been able to put the hardships of the past few years behind her. She loved Mr. and Mrs. B; they’d been so good to her. They treated her like part of their family. They took her on vacations, encouraged her to call them by their first names, which she still wasn’t comfortable with. They even paid her tuition at the community college where she was taking classes. Maybe one day she would have a degree. In retail merchandising. Perhaps she’d even open her own store. In the meantime, she looked at Taylor and Jamie as if they were her own. Like her younger cousins, whom she had always taken care of back home. With what had happened to her own family, they were practically all she had now. For the first time since everything started, she actually felt she had a new life. A life she trusted. Not to mention a home.

The elevator door had opened, but the kids just stood there.

“Let’s go, Jamie, please.” Lauritzia pushed them forward. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed a Hispanic-looking man in sunglasses leaning against a railing. She thought he seemed to be watching them. Things like that always gave her a shudder. “Taylor, take my hand.”

They stepped inside, along with the woman with the shopping bags and two or three others. The doors closed and the elevator stopped at the second floor. A young couple got on, along with two black guys in the usual team sweatshirts and baggy pants.

“Kids,” Lauritzia said, pulling them to the rear, “let everyone in.”

“Lauritzia, can we stop at Five Guys?” Jamie asked. His favorite burger place.

“We’ll see.”

The doors closed and the elevator went down to the first retail floor, then on to Level 1, where they had left the car. Lauritzia let her mind drift to what she would make them for dinner. The Bachmans said they were going out. She had some chicken she could thaw. And there was leftover macaroni.

Maybe Five Guys wasn’t the worst idea …

The doors opened on the ground level. “C’mon, guys.” Lauritzia placed her hands on their shoulders and started to push them forward.

That was the moment when her life was rocketed back to her own private hell.

A man stood in the doorway. A man who looked like a thousand men she had seen in her past: dark skin, black hair knotted into a roll, sunglasses; the all-too-familiar tattoo running down his neck.

She saw him reach inside his jacket.

Lauritzia knew. Even before she watched him search through the elevator for her eyes, scanning through the other people getting off.

Before she saw him pull out his weapon.

She knew.

And in the horror of what she knew was about to happen, her thoughts ran to the one thing she knew she could not lose.

“Taylor, Jamie!” As they stepped forward, she lunged for them, pulling them behind her as the first deadly pops rang out.

People began to scream.

The chilling sputter of the gun was a sound that had riddled through Lauritzia a thousand times back in her own town, as common as church bells. A sound she knew all too well, and that had cost her everyone she once held dear.

If this is my time, let it be so, she said to herself. But Jesus, Mary, please, not the kids.

The familiar sounds of panic rang all around her. The gunman was quick on the trigger and did not wait. Jamie and Taylor screamed, not fully realizing what was happening. Lauritzia forced them to the floor, pressing herself on top of them, praying that whatever evil was being done, it would leave and not take them.

Just spare the kids, she begged God. Please, do not take these kids!

She pressed her face against Taylor’s, saying her own prayers, and tried to stifle the girl’s cowering sobs. Someone fell in front of her, and she waited for the bullets to hit, for the end to come.

But suddenly there was a different sound. Not the ear-splitting sputter of a machine pistol. But two loud pops.

Then there was only silence where a moment before there had been mayhem. Silence and that awful, smoke-filled smell that always came before the wails.

She looked up. The tattooed young killer was on his back, dead, his semiautomatic pistol at his side. A young policeman came up with his arms still extended. What happened next was the aftermath she knew all too well: the awful smell of lead rising like smoke. The anguished screams and moans. The hushed murmurs of shock and disbelief.

The woman with the shopping bags who had smiled at her was dead, her once kindly eyes frozen and wide. One of the black guys was moaning, his T-shirt soaked in blood. The young man who got on with his girlfriend on Level 2 was holding on to her body, moaning in disbelief. “Kelly … Kelly …”

Beneath her, Jamie and Taylor were sobbing.

The policeman finally took his gun away from the shooter. “Is everyone all right?” Then, shouting into a radio, “Emergency. Emergency! Shooting at the Westchester Mall. Level One. We need EMS immediately—everything you’ve got. Suspect down.”

Other people wandered up and began to help the shell-shocked people out of the elevator. Lauritzia lifted herself up, and then the kids, who were whimpering in shock. I have to get them out of here, she knew. Before anyone comes.

Before they ask her questions that she did not want to answer.

“Is it over? Is it over, Lauritzia?” Jamie kept muttering.

“Yes, yes,” Lauritzia reassured him. She hugged them with all her might. “You are safe.” But she knew it wasn’t over.

Only then did she feel the burning on her face and put her hand there and notice the blood. Her blood.

“Lauritzia, you’re hurt!” Taylor yelled.

“We have to go!”

She pressed their faces close to her as they stepped over the bodies to shield them from the horrible sight.

“Everyone wait over there,” the policeman instructed them. “EMS is on the way. You too,” he said, guiding Lauritzia.

But she could not wait.

“Come!” she told them, lifting them off the ground and carrying them past the swarm of bodies. They were trembling and whimpering—who would not be?—but there was no time to delay. She took a last, quick look at the shooter. She had seen his face a thousand times. The tattoo. Only by the grace of God had they been spared.

But these others … She glanced back sadly at the heavyset woman’s frozen eyes. Dios toma ellos almas.

God take their souls.

But by the time the police came she had to be long gone.

“Children, quick!” she said, dragging them toward the garage. “We must get out of here now!”

CHAPTER TEN

Thirty minutes later, the tears ran freely in the Bachmans’ kitchen. Tears mixed with horror and elation.

“You saved their lives,” Roxanne said as she dabbed Lauritzia’s cheek with a cloth and hugged her. Held her as warmly and gratefully as if Lauritzia was one of her own. “There’s nothing we can do that can ever thank you enough.”

Mr. B rushed home. They told Lauritzia over and over that she was a hero. But she knew she wasn’t a hero. She knew she was anything but that.

Still shaking and in tears, Jamie and Taylor sat in their parents’ arms and told them how Lauritzia had pulled them to the elevator floor before they even realized what was happening, and how she had covered them with her body as the shooting broke out, shielding them from harm, and then got them out of there.

“It must have been so horrible,” Roxanne said over and over, tears in her own eyes, unable to let them out of her arms.

“It was. It was,” Taylor said, her face buried in the crook of her mother’s arm. “Mommy, I saw this woman and she was—”

“Don’t talk about it. Don’t talk about it, honey.” Roxanne pressed her daughter to her cheek, stroking her hair.

Jamie, still white as a ghost, could barely speak at all.

“Maybe we should contact the police,” Mr. Bachman said. He had rushed home from his law office in Stamford as soon as his wife called. “You got a look at him, didn’t you?”

“Not a good one,” Lauritzia said. “I was on the ground. No, please, no police. That is not a good idea.”

“Maybe later, Harold,” Roxanne said. “You can see how they’re all still rattled.”

“Yes.” Lauritzia nodded. “Maybe later. If they need me.”

“Anyway, there were witnesses all over,” Roxanne Bachman said. “We don’t have to involve the kids.”

Mrs. B was tall and pretty, and usually wore her shoulder-length blonde hair in a short ponytail. And she was very smart; Lauritzia knew she had once been in the financial investment business. That was how she and Mr. B first met. Now she did a lot of charity work for the school. And did yoga and ran marathons. And was the president of the neighborhood in Old Greenwich, where they lived.

“It’s just all so horrible.” Roxanne couldn’t stop squeezing her kids.

“They’re saying it was some kind of drug thing,” Harold said. His prematurely gray hair always gave him an air of importance, and Lauritzia knew he was important; he was a senior partner in a big law firm. “There was no immediate connection to any of the victims, but one of the people who was wounded has a record for selling drugs or something …”

“Sí, it was horrible,” Lauritzia agreed. They would never know how horrible. Yes, those poor people, Lauritzia knew, feeling ashamed.

“You ought to get that looked at,” Roxanne said of her wound. “I can take you to the emergency room—”

“No, the blood has stopped. It’s nothing.”

“Anyway, you should lie down. You’re still in shock. I’ll look in my medicine cabinet. I might have something.”

“Yes, I think that would be good.” Lauritzia nodded.

Roxanne put her hand to Lauritzia’s cheek. “Look how close this came … We can never make up to you what you did for us today.”

Soon the phones began to ring.

Mrs. B’s parents. Judy and Arn. Roxanne had called them, having told them the kids were heading to the mall, and knowing they would hear about it on the news. And then their friends. Then Jamie and Taylor’s friends. Soon it would be chatter on Facebook. After that, maybe local reporters. They’d want to hear their story.

And maybe hers too—the one who saved the kids!

Next it would be the police.

In her room, Lauritzia lay on her bed. She was growing more sad than she was afraid. Sad that it had come to this. That she had never been completely truthful with them. Or told them anything of her past. Except a made-up story, about how her father was a cook in the village where she came from. That had once been true. And how she had come here to visit her sister. That was partially true as well.

Before the nightmare began.

Now she knew she could no longer stay. They knew. They knew where she was. She could not put the family in any more danger than she already had. She could not do that to them. People she had grown to love. Anyway, once the truth came out, they would lose all trust in her. They would ask her to leave.

A drug thing. That’s what Mr. B claimed that it was …

It is always a drug thing, Lauritzia knew.

La cuota. That which is owed. To the familia, the cartel. A tax to the grave.

For her, what she owed was clear.

She had seen them. Through the maze of people. Before dragging Jamie and Taylor to the ground and burying her face in their trembling bodies. She had seen the shooter’s face and the dull, businesslike indifference in his eyes. The tattoo that ran down his neck. There was no attempt to hide it. The skeleton’s head that brought back all the terror and fear she had prayed she had forever left behind.

She knew who they were and where they were from.

And worse, Lauritzia thought, pressing the photo of her dead brothers and sisters to her pained heart, she knew exactly why they were here.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Lauritzia knew she had to leave. Leave now. She could not put them in danger another time.

There was just nowhere in the world for her to go.

Only back home, she realized, though that would be a fate of certain death for her. The day she left, she knew she could never return. She no longer had a home. Except here, while it had lasted. The Bachmans had given so much to her. She would miss Taylor and Jamie as if they were her own. But she could not put them at risk. She had lived two years in the fantasy that she had somehow escaped her fate. Part of a new family. Going to school. Pretending there was an outcome for her except that which she knew would ultimately find her.

Maybe that was someone else’s dream. Like the one of her own store. And surrounding herself with happy things. She perfectly understood this, as she took her bags from the closet.

La cuota.

It had found her. And it would have to be paid.

Two mornings later she made breakfast for the kids, as she did most every weekday. She had waited for them to feel fit and ready to go back to school. Mrs. B had met with the principal the day before and decided it was okay for them to return. The two were strangely quiet and withdrawn on their ride there, as if they somehow suspected something. Maybe they were just nervous to face the many questions about what had happened and have to recount their frightening tale. Maybe it was something deeper—the violence always did that to children. Why would they understand? As she drove up to the school and they were about to run out, Lauritzia reached over and held them.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I want a hug. An extra-special hug this morning. For friends forever.”

They looked at her as if it seemed a bit peculiar.

“I think I’ve earned it,” Lauritzia said, flashing them her happiest smile, trying not to show her sadness, which was killing her inside.

“Okay,” Jamie mumbled, and tilted his head against her arm. Taylor gave her a real hug, which Lauritzia put her whole soul into in return.

“I’ll see you soon,” she called after them. Then quietly to herself: “Quizá un día.”

Perhaps one day.

Back at the house, she hastily packed her belongings into her bags. Her clothes, many of them the fine things Mrs. B had given her. The pictures she had kept of her family. And ones with her new family too. A wooden carving of Santa Bessette that her sister Maria had given her, which now meant more to her than anything in the world. Sadly, Lauritzia put her textbooks aside on the night table.

She would not need them anymore.

When she was done, she dragged her bags out to the foyer and called for a taxi. Roxanne was at exercise class, and that gave her about half an hour. She sat at the kitchen island and tried to put her thoughts down in a note. To all of them. She told them how much she loved them all and how they were like family to her now, her only family, and always would be. But that she had to go back home.

“Lives here are not like where I come from” was all she said. The words were hard to get out. “There, they are not fully your own. I wish you all the love of God. You will always be in my heart. Each of you. Every day. You treated me with love and made me part of your life and for that it is I who can never repay you enough, not you me.”

She felt herself starting to cry.

Mercifully, she was saved by the sound of the cab honking outside. She brought her bags to the step and asked the driver to wait. Just a few moments more. She ran upstairs one last time, to the kids’ rooms, and placed a flower from the kitchen on each of their beds.

Where she was from it meant someone would always watch over you, no matter where in life you went.

As she finally went out the front door, carrying her bags to the taxi, she took a final look at the house that had given her a home for a second time.

Then she went down the stairs, wishing someone had put a flower on her pillow too.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Roxanne parked the Range Rover SUV in front of the three-car garage and went in through the kitchen. The bar method had been a real killer today. Jan was the instructor, and she always made her do things she didn’t think she could. Things no body was meant to do!

She had a crazy day ahead of her. There was the spring fund-raising lunch for the kids’ school, then a 2:00 P.M. meeting with a prospective new landscaper for the home owners’ association where they lived. She had a session planned with a trauma psychologist for the kids, so she had to pick them up herself; Harold said he would join. She had just put in a call to the school to check on how they were doing, and the principal said, while it was still early, so far everything seemed fine.

They’d been through hell, and Roxanne didn’t want to rush getting them back to normal.

“Lauritzia!” Roxanne called out as she came in, opening the fridge and grabbing a coconut water container. She took out her vitamins, magnesium pills, and fish oil. “Lauritzia, are you here?”

No answer. Maybe she was at the store. She took her iPad and sat down at the counter, thinking about her day.

That’s when she saw the note.

“Mr. and Mrs. B …”

As soon as she read the first sentence, which took her by surprise, her heart began to crumble.

“This is so difficult for me to write … , ” the letter began. “I have to go back home.”

Back home. Roxanne was dumbstruck. She was certain Lauritzia didn’t have any family there anymore. She had never completely spelled out the details, but she always said there was nothing for her back home anymore.

“You and your kids, you have been like a true family to me … You spoke of this after the terrible thing we witnessed the other day. But it is I who can never repay you, not …”

“Oh, no, no, no, Lauritzia …” Roxanne felt herself almost start to cry.

She didn’t know what could have caused Lauritzia to panic so. Obviously it was connected to what had happened at the mall. That had triggered something. She and Harold had noticed that Lauritzia hadn’t seemed herself since. But to leave like this. Out of nowhere. Without even saying good-bye. And to go where? Back home … back to a place where she had nothing. Running away as if she was in fear. Running from what? The kids would be brokenhearted.

The note made it seem as if she felt she had no options. But she did. She did have options.

Roxanne ran into Lauritzia’s room. The bed had been made, her textbooks piled neatly on the night table. How proud she had been the day she came back with them! The closet was cleaned out. Roxanne checked the bathroom. Empty. She sat sadly on the bed.

Oh, God, Lauritzia. Why?

It was clear she could only have left just a few minutes earlier. She had driven the kids to school. And the Ford Escape, the car she always used, was still in the driveway, so she must’ve called a cab.

Roxanne punched in the number, already sure where Lauritzia would head. She glanced at her watch. She knew she only had minutes.

“Riverside Cab.”

“Hi, this is Mrs. Bachman, at 230 Brookside. I think our nanny just left in one of your cars?”

“Yes, Mrs. Bachman.” The dispatcher paused, checking. “She should be just arriving at the station now.”

“Can you raise the driver? Can you tell him to tell her to wait for me? Tell her not to get on that train. I’ll be right there!”

She ran back into the kitchen and pulled off the Metro-North schedule that was pinned to the bulletin board. It was 9:32. The next train to New York was 9:45. Thirteen minutes. That didn’t give her much time.

Grabbing her bag, Roxanne jumped back into the Ranger Rover and backed out of the driveway. It was ten minutes to the station. If she didn’t get there, Lauritzia might well be gone, out of their lives forever.

She couldn’t let that happen. Not without letting her know, whatever it was, whatever had suddenly scared her, that she did have options.

She drove on Riverside, heading toward the station, and punched in Lauritzia’s cell on the Bluetooth.

No answer. She wasn’t picking up. Roxanne wasn’t surprised. The voice mail came on. “This is Lauritzia …”

“Lauritzia, this is Roxanne. Hon, I know you’re at the station. I’m headed there right now. I read your note. I know you feel you have to go, but whatever it is, I want you to wait for me. Just to talk, before you go. Will you wait for me, please! I’m on my way.”

She drove a little crazily, barely stopping at the signs on Riverside Avenue and Lake, then wound around the traffic circle into the station.

She drove up to the southbound tracks, just as a city-bound train was pulling in. She threw the car into park and ran up onto the platform. She looked in both directions, saw about a dozen people moving toward the opening doors. She didn’t see Lauritzia anywhere. Where the hell was she? Could she possibly have made it there ahead of time and gotten on a delayed, earlier train?

She threw her arms in the air and blew out a breath in dismay.

Then she saw her. At the far end of the platform, lugging her bags, just as the train came to a stop.

“Lauritzia!”

The nanny turned. There was something anxious and unhappy in her reaction, being spotted. Whatever it was, it wasn’t joy.

Roxanne sprinted down the platform, begging the doors not to close. “Lauritzia, please!”

Passengers got on. A conductor stepped out. “Nine forty-five to Grand Central! In or out, ma’am,” he said to Lauritzia.

She steadied her suitcases. Roxanne could see the conflicting emotions in her eyes. Hesitating …

Roxanne stopped about ten feet away. She just stood there. “Lauritzia, please … there’ll be another train. Please!”

The girl was tough as nails and 100 percent determined, but standing there, unsure what to do, she had the appearance of a frightened child. She took a step back onto the platform.

The train doors closed.

“I don’t want you to go,” Roxanne said, the train pulling away beside them. “I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why you feel you have to leave. But whatever it is, Harold and I want you to stay. The kids want you to stay.”

“I can’t …” Lauritzia shook her head. “I have to go.”

“We can help. You’re like family to us. You’re not alone, Lauritzia. Whatever it is, we’ll be there for you.”

“You can’t help.” Lauritzia’s eyes flashed defiantly. “You may think you can, but you can’t. And I didn’t save their lives. I didn’t. It was I who put them at risk.”

“What are you talking about?” Roxanne asked her.

Lauritzia grabbed her bags. She attempted to move away. But then one fell out of her grasp. She stopped. They were the only ones left on the platform.

“Tell me what it is. The kids love you. They’ll be heartbroken. We’ll be heartbroken.”

“And I love you all too. Don’t you understand?” Lauritzia put her bags down. “It is precisely because of that that I have to go.”

Roxanne went up and grabbed her. She put her arms around her and hugged her, feeling the tremor of the girl’s conflicted emotions. Until Lauritzia’s resistance began to wane, and her cheek fell wearily onto Roxanne’s chest, and she began to weep, her words falling off her lips like tears, tears of hopelessness and futility. “It will only bring bullets and tragedy. Please, Mrs. B, let me go.”

“Why?” Roxanne looked into her eyes. “Why do you have to run?”

“Don’t you understand, I didn’t save your children at the mall. I am the one who put them at risk. Those bullets weren’t meant for those other people who were killed.” Her eyes filled with terror. “They were meant for me!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

An hour later they were back at the house. Harold had rushed home at Roxanne’s urging. He and Roxanne went into Lauritzia’s bedroom. Sitting on her bed, clutching one of Taylor’s bears, her eyes red from weeping, Lauritzia told them what had happened.

“I know I told you I was from the south of Mexico,” Lauritzia began, “but I’m not. I’m from a region called Sinaloa. A town called Navolato. It is a village under the control of the Juarte cartel. Their plaza, it is called. It means the territory they control. Juarte, you may have heard of the name?” she asked, looking at Harold.

He just looked back at her and shrugged.

“Where I come from it is famous. Famous for the wrong things. The man who runs it, Vicente Juarte, he is known as ‘El Oso.’ The Bear. El Oso’s cartel is one of the biggest in Mexico, and he took over for his father when he was killed by a rival group. Killing and not knowing who will be killed next are a way of life in my home. The victims, they pile up in the streets. Six, seven a day. It is part of everyone’s life there. Do you know what happened to Ernesto Ayala? Did your cousin not come home from work on time? A part of everyone’s family. My family …”

She put down the bear, and Roxanne saw the wall of resistance and buried emotions Lauritzia was trying to break through. It was clear she did not tell this story to anyone.

“Three years ago, my father became a material witness against one of Juarte’s enforcers, a very brutal man named Eduardo Cano. ‘El Pirate.’ Cano was part of a group that is known as Los Zetas, the Z’s … maybe you’ve heard of them? They were once a part of the Mexican armed forces—I think trained by your own country’s military to go up against the cartels. But money lures, especially in Mexico, and so they formed their own cartel killing and protecting the drug sellers, and El Pirate, he worked closely for Vicente Juarte’s cartel.”

“How was your father involved?” Roxanne asked, her leg curled on the edge of the bed. “You always said he was a cook.”

“He was.” Lauritzia nodded. “Maybe a long time ago. When I was young. Three years ago, El Pirate conducted a hit in the town of Culiacán, near where I am from. My father, who worked for him now, was charged with carrying it out. He had his own nephew, my cousin, who was just a boy, take charge of it, in which two American citizens, a husband and wife, were murdered in their car, and by accident—though there is no such thing as an accident in Sinaloa—three other Americans, college kids, who were caught in the crossfire. It was his big step up for my cousin Lupe. His first real charge. Maybe you heard of the case here. I think it was on the news for a while …”

“I remember,” Harold said, leaning forward on the chair at Lauritzia’s desk. “I think they were there on spring break. One of them was even from Greenwich. Wasn’t someone charged in the crime?”

“Sí.” Lauritzia nodded. “Cano. Cano was charged. Months later he was apprehended in the United States. But somehow the case against him was dropped. You tell me, how does that happen? An attack against your own citizens. He was simply deported and never put on trial. He went back to Mexico, where he still works as a killer for Vicente Juarte.

“The government convinced my father that they would protect him. And us, his family. But when the trial was dropped, they blamed it on his testimony and did not follow through. They did not grant us asylum. Clearly he could no longer go back home. But Cano took revenge against him for his betrayal. One by one, he killed his children and nieces and nephews.”

Roxanne felt a weight fall inside her as it grew clear exactly who Lauritzia meant. Her own brother and sisters. She looked anxiously to Harold.

“First, they killed my brother, Eustavio,” Lauritzia said, “who was just a postal clerk in my village. They came and took him away as he was on his way to work, and they found him in a ditch a day later with burns all over his body and his genitals cut off.”

“Oh, God …” Roxanne looked at her, a wave of sympathy rushing into her eyes.

“Then my older sister. She worked in a beauty salon. She was beautiful and she was engaged to be married. They weren’t satisfied just with her. They came in and killed everyone in the salon. Twelve people. Innocent people. People who just worked there. Customers. They found Nina’s body with sixty bullet holes in it. No one was ever charged with the murder. No one, though they came in in the middle of the day and shot off over two hundred rounds.”

“Lauritzia,” Roxanne said, reaching for her hand.

“Then they killed my sister Maria, who was living with my cousins in Juárez. She’d been raped and all cut up—”

“Lauritzia, you don’t have to go on,” Harold said, exhaling a grim breath.

“Yes, yes, I have to go on. You should hear. This is the life we lead. This is what it is like for us there. My brother and sisters and I tried to come with my father when he was granted asylum in the States. But by that time, the trial against Cano had fallen apart and your government no longer had a need to accommodate him, so we were all denied. They said we had not proven that a threat existed directly against us, only against my father. Now they are all dead. All of them. My father could not even come back home to bury them.”

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry,” Roxanne said, and leaned forward to hug her. Lauritzia pulled back and shook her head.

“Do you think it stopped there? No, it did not. It still goes on. These men, they are more vicious than animals. Animals would never stoop to do such things. They even killed my cousin, the one who conducted their own hit, that started this. Lupe. He was just a boy, nineteen. Yes, he was on the wrong side of things, but in Mexico there are two sides to life: those who are victims, who are poor and scared and cannot afford even the smallest luxury in life; and the ones who say yes and get involved. Who see the others driving big cars and carrying wads of bills and carrying on with the women. Plata o plomo, as we say. Silver or lead. That is their choice. He chose silver. Doing what they tell you to do is just the way. Do you think he knew any better? He was just nineteen …

“Then just before I started to work for you, they found my sister Rosa …” Lauritzia’s eyes started to fill up with tears. “Mi gemela. My twin.”

Now she had to stop. Roxanne moved over and finally took hold of her hand, squeezing it tightly. But Lauritzia just shook her head and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, saying, “You wanted to know why I have to leave? So you should hear. You remember I had her picture here by my bed.”

“I remember,” Roxanne said, tears building in her eyes now as well.

“She was older. Six minutes. We used to laugh. She always insisted how she was that much wiser than me, six minutes, and no matter how much older I became she would always have that over me. She met a man. They were married. She was living in Texas. Dallas. She had a job, as an administrator for an insurance company. And she was pregnant. Five months pregnant. With my little nephew. They found her in the elevator of her building. I won’t even tell you what they did …” Tears shone in her eyes, tears of anger now. “He would have been named Eustavio. After our older brother, who they …”

She stopped and turned to Roxanne, her dark eyes glistening with rage. “This is why I told you to let me go! Do I need to finish the story? Do you understand now? What happened at the mall? That the only reason I am alive and the others are dead is because the killer began shooting and a policeman happened to be there.

“Yes, I saw them!” Lauritzia said. She turned to face Harold. “Of course I saw them! Los Zetas. I saw the look of the devil on the killer’s face and the dead man’s tattoo on his neck, and when I dragged your children to the ground, I prayed, Please, God, whatever you have for me, do not take them too! I swore that I would leave, so that is why I must. That is what I meant, that bullets and tragedy, they will never let up. These men, they carry their vengeance to the grave. Now you see why I have to go. It is my fate. I cannot put you or your children at risk. You should not have come after me. I’ve already said my good-byes. I should have gotten on that train!”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Harold asked where Lauritzia’s father was now. She merely shrugged and said she didn’t know.

Only that he was in this country somewhere. But that even the U.S. government no longer knew for sure. “He grew afraid. Cano was trained in this country, by your own agents. Why did the trial against him just fall apart? Influence is something that can be bought on both sides of the border, is it not? My father thought it best for me not to know his whereabouts. In order to protect me. I haven’t spoken to him since my sister was killed. More than two years now. We both protect our whereabouts.”

He shot Roxanne a look that suggested maybe they could try to locate him.

“No. No!” Lauritzia shook her head, reading his intention. “Do you really think I’d be safer with him? I would only draw him to them. Which is what they want.”

Roxanne asked her where she was heading to when she stopped her at the station.

“I have a cousin. In New Mexico. On my mother’s side.” Lauritzia shrugged. “I was going to see if she would let me stay there for a while.”

“And if she wouldn’t?”

“If she wouldn’t, then I do not know what I would do. I am in violation of a court order to return home. I have no job, and without a job I can no longer remain. I would go home.”

“Home?” Roxanne looked at her in shock. “Home is a death sentence for you, Lauritzia.”

“My life is a death sentence, Mrs. Bachman, don’t you see? Tell me what other choice I have! Live on the streets here and beg? Sell myself?”

Roxanne reached out and clasped her hand. “That’s why you never allowed us to sponsor you for your green card, isn’t it? Because you were afraid?”

“Yes. I was in violation of a court order to leave the country. They would have found out who I am and sent me back. And even if they didn’t, look what happened to Cano. He is Zetas. He is very connected with the United States. He would have found out where I was. I am sorry that I never told you these things.” She took Roxanne’s hand in hers. “I never wanted to place my worries on you. I never wanted to put your family at risk. You must believe that. But now that you know, the children will be coming home soon. I should leave …” She started to get up.

“No,” Roxanne said.

“No, Missus, it is not right.” Lauritzia stood up, but her eyes welled with tears. “It will be very hard for me to see them again and have to—”

“No.” Roxanne held her back by the arm. “This isn’t just a place of work for you. This is your home. No one forces you to leave.”

Lauritzia smiled, a smile that was both pleased yet skeptical, and went to pick up her coat and scarf. “I’m sorry, but I do not have a home anymore.”

“Yes, you do.” Roxanne took Lauritzia in her arms, the girl attempting to pull herself away, to grab her coat, to break free, until she just surrendered, not knowing whether to resist or go, the torrent building in her eyes, until she just gave up and put her head on Roxanne’s shoulder and began to cry.

Roxanne looked at her husband over Lauritzia’s shoulder as she stroked her hair. “You poor child. God only knows what you’ve been through. Well, you damn well have one now.”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Roxanne argued to Harold outside, his lawyerly, gray-templed look of reason and restraint. “I know what’s happened. But we can’t just let her leave. That girl’s been through hell. If we let her walk out that door, we’ll be sending her to her grave. She’ll be dead in a week!”

“Rox, you heard her story …” Harold leaned against the wall. “We’ve got the kids. These people could try again anytime.”

“And speaking of the kids, look what she did for ours at the mall. She put them before herself. You saw how close that shot came. That could have been Jamie or Taylor. We can’t just abandon her, Harold. What kind of a thing would that be?”

“There’s a lot involved here, Rox. It’s not just a question of good intentions. She’s in violation of a court order to return home. She’s been illegally hiding here. For all we know her father may be at odds with the U.S. government. Not to mention the little matter that if these people actually now know where she is—”

“I realize they know where she is, Harold! But we can’t just walk away from her. This girl saved our children.”

“I was talking about our children, Roxanne.” Harold looked at her sternly.

“I know. I know … But if she goes back and something happens to her, I couldn’t live with that. We don’t do those kinds of things, Harold. If what she says is true, the U.S. government has treated her every bit as cruelly as this Cano. They’ve got blood on their hands as well. She saved Jamie and Taylor. We can’t turn around and say, ‘Thank you very much, but you have to be on your way. It’s just too much of a risk. Here’s a little money.’ Not after what she’s been through. You’re a lawyer. The case can be reopened. We can represent her in some way. Or we can set her up somewhere. We can afford it. What the hell is it all for, anyway? We don’t just call her part of the family, and take her on vacations and trust our children in her care, and then when something comes out that interferes with our neat, orderly lives, give her fifty bucks and a train ticket and tell her we don’t have the heart!”

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