by Lisa Gardner
“Do you still want to know the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m not the one to talk to, for I honestly do not have the answers. Suspicions, yes. Answers, no.”
I understand. Where I need to go next. Whom I must see next.
Katarina rises to standing. She is done with me. And most likely, based on my washed-out, shell-shocked features, she assumes I really will take it no further. People think they want knowledge. Until they have it, of course.
I watch her weave her way through the crowded room. The way certain men glance up, then look again. The smile she has for each and every one of them. She is beautiful, beguiling, and brilliant.
If I see that, my mother saw that, too. This new and unexpected danger to her heart, her family, her very identity.
I finally rise to standing. What I need to learn next can’t happen here.
I’m just leaving the coffee shop when I first hear the sound of sirens.
CHAPTER 35
D.D.
“WE GOT A PROBLEM.” PHIL hung up his phone, turned to D.D., who was just now climbing into the vehicle.
“Talk,” D.D. demanded. They’d wrapped up the scene at the Delaney fire and were now headed for Cambridge, given Flora’s suspicion that their arsonist, Rocket Langley, was headed for Evie’s mother’s house next.
“A series of fires have erupted in Cambridge.”
“Rocket is already at Evie’s mother’s house?”
“No. Harvard campus. Trash-can fires. Three, four, five. I’m not sure. Calls are still pouring into the fire department. Details are sketchy, but it sounds like there’s a series of fires all over campus.”
D.D. didn’t know what to say. “What are the odds our firebug was last seen headed for Cambridge, and now there’s a string of fires on the Harvard campus? Except”—she glanced at Phil in confusion—“Rocket is known for structural fires. Why the hell would he suddenly be messing around with something as petty as trash-can fires.”
Phil shrugged. “Got bored? Killing time? I don’t know. I’m still not sure why anyone likes fire so much. But I’m with you—Rocket was last seen headed toward Cambridge. These new fires must be his handiwork. Too coincidental to be anything else.”
D.D. shook her head. “As soon as this case almost makes sense, it runs away from us again. Burning Evie’s house I can get. Torch Evie’s lawyer’s house, sure. But trash-can fires on a campus where Evie’s father worked sixteen years ago? That defies all logic.” She scowled, whacked the dashboard of Phil’s car, scowled again. “Any sightings of Rocket?”
“Not yet. But the fire department is just now arriving on-site. And given it’s a college campus right before Christmas break . . .”
“Tons of panicked students milling about.”
“I’ll let Flora know,” Phil said.
“Really? You’re in charge of my CI now? I thought you didn’t even like her.”
“She’s had a couple of good points on this case. Plus, she’s already headed to Cambridge. Given the traffic we’re about to hit, she’ll be there way before us. And as you said”—Phil shrugged uncomfortably—“she knows what Rocket looks like. That helps.”
“Fine. Manage my CI. See if I care.” But D.D. was frowning again. They were chasing their tails. Worse, they were chasing a firebug’s arson spree. A good investigator didn’t just react to all the crimes going on around her. She got ahead of the game.
Three fire events. Evie’s home. Dick Delaney’s town house. And now a spree at the Harvard campus where Evie’s father had once worked.
What the hell had Conrad stumbled upon? Because of all their avenues of investigation, the angle that made the most sense was Conrad’s involvement with the dark web. All those years he’d spent running his own undercover operations. The level of trust and access he would’ve gained over time. The secrets he might have learned . . .
Since Phil was dialing Flora, D.D. did the next best thing: called Quincy. The fed picked up at the first ring.
“SSA Quincy.”
“We got more fires—a string of trash cans all over the Harvard campus.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Exactly. What have you and Keith learned?”
“Flora recommended we switch gears, see if we could use Jacob’s username, I. N. Verness, to pick up traces of Conrad’s activities on the dark web.”
“Any luck?”
“Kind of. Conrad appeared to be shopping for an assassin.”
“What?” That caught D.D. off guard.
“On the dark web, you really can buy just about anything. From human trafficking to murder for hire.”
“Conrad was taking out a hit on someone?”
“Given the depths of Conrad’s online activities, our preliminary theory is that he’s spent years posing as a ‘criminal of all trades.’ Kind of a shadowy underworld figure, dabbling in drugs, women, all sorts of unsavory activities. Leading up to his death, where he talked about having some kind of serious threat that required a serious solution. He was looking for recommendations for wet work.”
“He wanted to identify possible assassins,” D.D. said.
“Clearly.”
“Because he realized he was in trouble? That maybe someone had finally figured things out and was coming for him? Or”—she had a second idea—“the missing ex-wife. If Jules LaPage had found her, his next move would be to hire an executioner. Maybe this was Conrad’s way of trying to be one step ahead. Identify the major players, so he’d know if any of them got assigned that kind of hit.”
“Either way, Conrad was researching hired guns. Then Conrad himself was gunned down.”
“He got too close. Flora was right; he discovered something he shouldn’t have. Dammit, if Evie hadn’t shot up the laptop . . .” D.D. was frustrated again. She forcefully exhaled, got herself back on track.
“From a federal perspective,” Quincy began.
“By all means.”
“This is a cleanup operation. First the shooting, now all the fires. Someone is aggressively removing any and all traces of Conrad Carter and what he may have discovered.”
“But why trash-can fires?”
“I have no idea. Except firebugs are like serial killers—they can’t always control their impulses. Maybe your Rocket guy has gone from controlled burn to arson spree.”
“Meaning he won’t stop,” D.D. began.
“Until someone stops him,” Quincy finished for her.
D.D. shook her head. Just what they needed, an out-of-control fire-happy kid to go with their already-too-complicated investigation. Focus, she thought. Forget Rocket and trash-can fires. Think motive. Conrad, who’d spent years surfing the dark web. Meeting in person the people behind the cybermasks. Gaining trust. Building relationships. Year after year. What was it Keith had told Flora—the dark web was still a fundamentally human system? Real administrators who knew each other, forum managers who personally vouched for one another. And the assassin he’d been trying to hire? Maybe he’d also arranged to meet face-to-face?
“Gotta go,” D.D. announced.
“We’ll continue our work here,” Quincy said.
“Keith any good?”
“Better than I expected. Interesting.”
D.D. didn’t have a reply for that. She ended the call, nodded once at Phil, and he roared away from the curb, hurtling toward Cambridge and the next danger to the city.
CHAPTER 36
FLORA
I HAVE JUST EXITED THE T stop, climbing up into the slushy sidewalks and cold air of Harvard Square, when the first fire truck roars by. I track it instantly. Except the fire engine barely makes it three blocks before coming to a screeching halt, and I realize belatedly the sky is gray not from low-hanging clouds, but from plumes of smoke.
The sidewalks are a crush of act
ivity. Groups of students moving away from the fire in an organized fashion, intermingled with lone gawkers who want to see what’s going on. I decide to play gawker, too, pulling the hood of my gray sweatshirt over my head and burying my hands deep in the pockets of my down jacket as I shoulder my way toward the bustling firemen, already pulling hoses and shouting orders.
I had assumed Rocket was headed toward Evie’s mother’s stately Colonial in the residential part of Cambridge. But given the kid’s penchant for burning things, I have to figure he’s behind this latest danger, even if I don’t understand why.
Which means he’s around, somewhere. Watching.
Except then I identify the firemen’s target and draw up short. I’m not looking at a building fire. Something big and ominous and impressive. I’m looking at a narrow cloud of smoke, followed by a sudden skinny burst of flame. Except there’s another and another and another. Trash cans. I’m looking at four trash cans, spaced at random intervals, all on fire.
What the hell?
I think back to the first night I met Rocket, that particular trash can. And almost on cue, a new line of smoke rises in the distance . . .
I don’t yell at the firemen. I burst into a run. It’s Rocket. I know it. Working his way across campus, dropping firebombs as he goes. Why, I have no idea. But I’ve met the boy and this . . . this is exactly his style. Fire, beautiful and mysterious and everywhere.
Screaming. Chaos. None of the fires are big; it’s the sheer number and randomness that are leading to panic. Trash cans bursting aflame here and then there and here again. Students are trying to scurry off campus as fast as I and various firemen try to push through. The firefighters need to hose down each trash can and stomp out embers. Me, I need to get to the head of the line, spot the source.
How is Rocket pulling this off? No way he boarded the subway with canisters of gasoline or a backpack of Molotov cocktails. Had he already stashed supplies nearby? A first stockpile for the lawyer’s town house? A second buried behind a dumpster on campus? Is there another target?
I spy a figure moving ahead. Not running, but definitely moving in a brisk, direct fashion. Dark hoodie—not dissimilar to mine—pulled over his face. I don’t stop to think if this is wise, or what I’m going to do if I draw too close and Rocket notices me. I trust in my training and the low buzz of adrenaline that’s jolting through my entire system.
As I’d explained to Keith, it’s hard for a girl like me to experience an up.
But this . . . this does it for me every time.
Rocket. Right in front of me. He turns just as I start to close the gap. For one moment we’re eye to eye. He has a backpack slung over one arm. As I watch, he pulls out a small clear bottle. Alcohol. With a rag stuffed into its neck. A Molotov cocktail, just as I had expected, in a bag he must’ve stashed somewhere nearby. Meaning he knew he was coming here. All part of his plan. Burn down a lawyer’s tony brownstone in downtown Boston, then head to Cambridge and light up a college campus.
Why?
My time for thinking is up. Rocket is no longer holding the Molotov cocktail; he’s lit the fuse and is hurtling it straight at me. I yelp, dive left. The flaming alcohol hits the ground to my right, where lucky for me, it sputters out against the winter mush. I don’t bother checking it. There are enough professionals on-site and my mission is clear. I clamber to my feet and start running. There, up ahead. I spot the dark hoodie again. Rocket, running pell-mell through a startled crowd of bundled-up students. The kid is crazy fast. In a straight-out sprint, I’m never gonna take him. Instead, I do my best to guess his direction, then race a diagonal intercept.
I’m just starting to gain on him, when he glances over his shoulder and realizes my strategy. Just like that, he veers left, farther away from me. I redouble my efforts, plowing through a huddle of students, leaping over a bench.
I land wrong, my right foot sliding out on the slushy ground. My shoulder hits hard, and briefly, I lose my breath.
“Are you okay?” someone asks.
Another: “What happened?”
I just shake my head, stagger to my feet, and take off again. Except I no longer see my target. Maybe there, around that corner. Wait, that coffee shop. That entrance to the subway.
I rattle down the steps as fast as I can, but belowground, on the waiting platform, I encounter a sheer wall of people. Heavy coats, obscuring hats, strangling scarfs.
I look all around, but it doesn’t matter.
I’ve lost him.
CHAPTER 37
EVIE
WHEN I FIRST ARRIVE AT my mother’s house and discover the media gone, I’m nearly disoriented. Where are the flashing bulbs, the screaming questions? Three days later, the silence is almost disturbing. What did I do to deserve this?
Then I remember the fire trucks in Harvard Square. Of course, a local fire. The media have moved on to bigger news. How kind of them.
I walked home from my meeting with Katarina. Only a mile and a half, and the kind of brisk trek I needed to put my thoughts in order. Still, when I reach the side door of the kitchen, place my hand on the knob, I can see my gloved hand is shaking.
All these years. All these years I considered my parents a great love story. And now this? My father had been cheating on my mom. Worse, she had known about it, and probably taken extreme measures to secure her own future.
Is that how she’s lived in this house all these years? Because coming home that day to my father’s body wasn’t some terrible, shocking tragedy? Just a well-executed plan? That she then conned her own daughter to take the blame for?
I feel like such a fool. I’ve spent most of my life as nothing but a pawn for my mother. I was never strong or clever enough to have helped my father. Then I went on to marry a man who also kept me entirely in the dark.
All these years, I thought I was the one carrying around secrets. Instead, it’s the people I love who’ve never trusted me with the truth. Who’ve manipulated me, over and over again.
I open the door and march right in.
My mother isn’t in the kitchen. The vodka bottle is out, though, a fresh lemon peeled on the cutting board, meaning she couldn’t have gone far. I pull off my gloves, hang up my coat, begin the search.
The sitting room with the impeccably decorated mantel: nothing. The ridiculous parlor with all its silk sofas: not there either.
Then I know.
I walk to my father’s office. My mother is sitting, quiet and still, behind his desk. To judge by the empty state of her martini glass, she’s been there a bit.
And she looks, at this moment, so small, so lost, so alone in the world, I lose my head of steam, just like that.
“This is where I feel him the most,” she says quietly, not looking at me, but clearly knowing I’m in the doorway. “It’s why I could never bring myself to change it. The kitchen was mine. But this room . . . Sometimes, I swear I can still smell him, his aftershave, the whiff of chalk from his fingers, the shampoo I bought him from Italy because it really did help thicken his hair. He swore only I cared about things like that, yet he smiled every time I got him a new bottle. Silly, all the ways we knew each other. Awful, to still miss him so much after all these years.”
“You had him killed.”
She finally glances up. Her expression is unfathomably sad. Again, not my mother at all. “What are you talking about?”
“Stop lying to me! I spoke to Katarina Ivanova.”
Just like that, she deflates. “I was stupid,” she mutters at last. “Vain and silly and upset. Your father knew that about me. He understood.”
“Understood what? That given a choice between him leaving you and him dead, you wanted him dead?”
“I didn’t want him dead. I loved him! It was her. She was the problem. She needed to go!”
I’m so confused it takes me a moment. Then I get it. The whole if I can�
��t have him, no one will didn’t necessarily mean my mom had gone after my father, but after Katarina, the other woman. Who, being dead, still wouldn’t have him.
“You hired someone to kill Katarina Ivanova? You tried to take out Dad’s mistress?”
“I didn’t go through with it. I just . . . had a weak moment. I was angry. Hurt. These things happen.”
“Mom, you hired a hit man to murder a woman, and you call that a weak moment?”
“You don’t understand! He was my world. My entire world! If he left me . . . I couldn’t have lived with it. I’m not like you, Evie. I’ve never been like you.”
“What did you do, Mom?” Because I’m still so confused. If she’d tried to kill Katarina, then why was that woman still alive and my father the one who was dead? And where in the hell had my mom found a hired gun? Who in the hell?
“I was upset. I’d read your father’s e-mails and it sounded like he was going to leave me. I became emotional. That woman . . . she had to go. But I don’t know how to do such things. I don’t even like guns. So I went to a . . . friend. Explained the situation. He tried to talk me out of it but when he wasn’t looking, I swiped his Rolodex. Discovered what I needed for myself and made the call. Except then your father came home. He’d heard all about my confrontation with Katarina. He assured me he’d never for a moment been tempted to leave our marriage. He loved me and only me. I was the great love of his life. And then . . . things were good.”
I struggle to grasp what she’s saying. “So Dad plans to leave you, you plan to kill his mistress, but both of you decide you’re perfectly happy together instead?”
“You’ve never known great passion, Evie. It’s the real reason I didn’t like Conrad for you. Oh, he was nice enough. But the way you looked at him . . . You were playing it safe. Again.”
“Wow, I’m so sorry. My husband didn’t cheat on me and I didn’t try to assassinate the other woman, so clearly we had a boring marriage. I’ll bear that in mind for the future.”
