by Nancy Holder
As soon as Gabe and Celeste left Long Island, Gabe drove his car to a parking garage and exchanged his car for the plainest, most boring sedan on the planet. He hadn’t rented it; he’d phoned ahead and asked to borrow it “for a couple days” from Shannon, one of the secretaries in the DA’s office. Gabe could tell that Shannon thought it was a little odd but he knew she had a crush on him and would be happy to help. She had cleared out all her belongings and made plans to carpool.
Celeste looked impressed that he’d taken this action and loaded her weapons in the trunk. Gabe was feeling a bit caught up in this manhunt, which was not at all what he had expected when he’d driven to the Ellison compound. He managed to switch a few things around at the office, and as everyone was still flush from the victory of the Zilpho conviction, the DA was happy to give Gabe some personal time.
Celeste had tried her father’s phone at least a dozen times. All calls continued to be blocked. Her thirteenth call was to Bruce Fox, informing him that she was going to be gone overnight. When he began protesting, she hung up on him. Then she turned to Gabe and said, “Even if we come up empty, we’ll be gone so long it may as well be overnight.”
He detected a hint of interest in him and wondered what kind of woman would be able to contemplate spending the night with a companion on a search for her missing father and his potential connection to an escaped convict. Then he figured he was being a little hard on her; under stress, people’s minds wandered through all kinds of strange fields. He remembered one time when he was locked in the safe room of his adoptive parents’ house, clawing at the walls and roaring, he had wondered if they made Spider-man footie pajamas.
He knew he shouldn’t react to her perhaps-unconscious invitation; he was certain she was unaware that he’d read her. He was trying to figure out how to approach her. After getting decked by her and seeing the weapons arsenal at her disposal, he knew there was more to her than met the eye.
“Do you know why your father might be at the lake house?” he asked her.
“There are so many reasons, Mr. Lowan. As you might imagine, he has lots of enemies.” She waited a beat and then she said, “Powerful people usually do.”
He felt her eyes on him. He inclined his head. “That’s true.”
“How did you know that pin belonged to my father?”
He cocked his head as they began to maneuver out of the city. It was snowing, lending the day a gloomy air as they passed boarded-up windows, reminders of the blackout. It suddenly hit him how tired he was.
“How did you know I was right?”
She looked out the window as if at the blustering white. She tapped her fingers against the face of the phone and sighed.
“I haven’t trusted Bruce Fox for quite some time. I’m not sure what he’s up to, but he’s been acting sketchy for a while. I don’t know if he had anything to do with my father’s disappearance, but he didn’t like you.” She smiled faintly. “That was an endorsement, in my book.”
The fact that she didn’t answer his question was an answer. He was certain that she had recognized the pin.
She said, “Gabe, yes. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was his. He showed it to me once and he told me that he belonged to a group like the Freemasons. He said they all had pins but that his was special. There’s a band of gold around the edge. That’s because he’s the president.”
Gabe’s lips parted in surprise. A band of gold? He hadn’t even noticed. Was that how Sam Landon had known it was Cavanaugh Ellison’s pin, and not because of the circuitry?
He wanted to take it out and look at it but he was afraid that if he did, she might push harder for him to give it back. He didn’t know what she would do if he refused. They were in a car loaded with weapons and she was lethal. He was certain she could take him out with a single blow.
“Why did you pretend not to recognize it?”
“I’m an Ellison. We thrive on lies and secrecy.” She crossed her arms. “And I think you do too.” Well, he thought. She’s perceptive. And the thought skittered across his mind that she was probably good in bed. And that maybe he’d be in a position to find out.
“How much longer until we get there?” he asked her.
“Five hours.”
He took a deep breath. What the hell. Nothing ventured and all that.
“Do you know about a group called Muirfield?”
WOODLAWN CEMETERY
There were a lot of boarded-up storefronts on the drive into the Bronx and an almost equal number of trucks from glass replacement businesses parked in front of them. A few stores were offering “Blackout Savings!” and Vincent was glad they still had things to sell. The dollar value of the merchandise stolen during the blackout was shocking.
Then Vincent was walking among centuries-old headstones and tombs topped with weeping angels, holding a printout of internments that had taken place within the last year. His stomach clenched and he balled his fists. The smell of death was not new to him. He had been a soldier and a doctor. And he had scented out death for Catherine before. He had known that her mother was not buried in the grave Catherine had visited on the anniversary of her death every year. Now she knew it too.
And now I’m looking for the grave of someone who gave up her life for me.
“There are too many graves,” Tess said as she loped up beside him. “This is hopeless.”
They walked slowly together. He said, “How’s she holding up?”
Tess slid a glance at him. “She’s scared. For you.”
“Maybe it’s time I went to look for Reynolds.”
“Didn’t she ask you not to? Then don’t. Help us find Angelo.”
Before he could speak, she turned and faced him.
“I’m serious, Vincent. Cat is scared that she’s going to wind up coming to a place like this to stand at your grave.”
“Then I should do everything I can to make sure that doesn’t happen. Which means finding Reynolds.”
Tess stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat and huffed. He backed down. He had already agreed to make Angelo DeMarco his priority. It was just that he felt so terrible looking for Tori. She had lived in fear because of men preoccupied with hunting—and creating—beasts.
“This place is going to close soon,” he said. “Maybe you could take another row.” He was uncomfortable doing what he had to do around her.
“Right.” She moved away.
Then fresh anger surged through him, and he was worried he was going to beast. Nervously he scanned for visitors to the cemetery; he should not be seen. But he was becoming so angry…
Then his phone rang. It could only be J.T. or Catherine. He stilled the beast, and answered the phone. To slake off energy, he kept walking past the graves. Faster. Faster still.
“Hey.” It was Catherine. “Vincent, I discovered something. Angelo’s birthday is in two weeks. He’ll be twenty-one. He’s going to inherit a lot of money from a trust fund. Millions of dollars. He’s going to be incredibly wealthy.”
He kept moving, using up the adrenaline. He stayed quiet. He knew there was more. He could tell by the strain in her voice.
“The money coming to him is from Tori’s mother’s estate.”
Suddenly he stopped. He was standing in front of a grave decorated with a large bouquet of yellow roses. Tori’s favorite flower.
The white marble headstone was very plain, the inscription simple:
Tori Lynne Windsor
Beloved Daughter
He hadn’t known that she’d been buried here. He hadn’t even known if there was a funeral service, if people had come to pay their respects. Or if she had lain, alone, in the cold ground, with no one to mourn her.
Who had arranged for all of it?
He had grieved for days, weeks, and was still grieving. And he had felt so cast out that he hadn’t even thought to see if someone had made arrangements for her.
To the last, I put her third, he chided himself.
“Someone sent her
yellow roses,” Vincent said. I didn’t send her any flowers at all.
“You found her? I’m sorry, Vincent. This must be difficult.” Cat discreetly cleared her throat. “Did you hear what I said about the inheritance?”
“Yes.” He sensed that she was asking him for information. He had none. “Tori never talked about her mother. She never went to see friends. She didn’t seem to have anyone else in her life.”
That had been the topic of his last real conversation with Tori. She had been lonely, and he had already admitted to himself that they weren’t good for each other. They brought out the beast in each other. Tori relished the sense of power her beast side gave her, which he could understand. Her father had been a domineering bully who had gone so far as to surgically implant a tracker in her arm. She had trouble controlling her beast side because she didn’t really want to control it. Vincent did. He identified with his human side.
The part of him that Catherine brought out in him.
He had been on the verge of breaking up with her, and she had risked her life for him and his friends. Risked it, and lost it.
“So there are yellow roses?”
He examined the bouquet. “Yes, and a card. It says, ‘For Torimacto.’”
“That’s him. That’s close to what he called a pennywhistle. We learned that from our homeless man last night.”
Vincent wasn’t quite following. But he trusted Catherine and if she had just confirmed that these flowers were from Angelo, then he was satisfied.
“Can you take a picture for me? And can you take the card?”
“Sure.”
“I have to go,” she said. “I’ll call you soon. And… Vincent? Thank you.”
“Of course.”
She disconnected. He did as she asked, plucking the card from among the roses, putting it to his nose then slipping it into his pocket. Diabetics secreted an odor that even normal humans could detect. The smell altered depending upon whether they had taken their insulin or not. There was no diabetes scent on the card. Ergo, Angelo had not touched it.
The flowers were wilting, the edges of the petals turning to brown. All things must pass, but Tori had been so young. As she lay dying, she had admitted that her love for Vincent was doomed. He was destined for Catherine, not her. She was glad that she had sacrificed herself so that he could live, and be happy, and be with Catherine.
And now here you are, he thought. His guilt was overwhelming. Tori was one more example of the danger anyone who got close to him was in. She had paid the ultimate price for knowing Vincent Keller. But worse, she had paid that price with a broken heart. She had died knowing he didn’t love her.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. And in that moment, he made a vow that he would find this Angelo. To save his own life, yes, but more importantly, to save the young man’s.
Even then, it was as if Vincent’s beast-self ripped free, like a shadow over Tori’s resting place, and protested. It wanted to go after Reynolds.
Not now, he thought.
He leaned forward and pressed a hand on Tori’s name. Tess had joined him, and she said, “I’m sorry, Vincent.”
“She just didn’t have enough time to get used to her new life. Her world.” He lowered his arm. “We should move on. What’s next for your investigation?” “Well, you heard about the inheritance, right? We need to look more deeply into the McEvers-Windsor-DeMarco connection. So we need to take a look at Claudia McEvers’ apartment. We have an address.”
“I can do that.”
“That’d be great. Then Cat and I can go Turntable. It’s a club.”
“J.T. loves that place. He told me he took you there on a date.”
“Yeah.” She sounded shy, and it made him smile a little. Tess and J.T. were perfect for each other. It was obvious to everyone, including him.
“Okay, so I’ll give you her address,” Tess said. She hesitated. “As usual, we have a lot of stuff going on that we can’t disclose, but we want to find this kid. And we need to do as much of our investigation by the book as we can.”
“I’ll be careful, Tess,” he promised.
“We have to make Angelo our priority, but once we find him, we’ll throw everything we have into finding Reynolds.” She looked at him expectantly. She needed him to promise that he’d stick to their agenda.
“We’re good,” he said.
Except… none of this was good.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ON THE WAY TO THE LAKE HOUSE
The snow had begun to fall in earnest, and the road conditions as the drifts piled up urged Gabe to drive slowly. Celeste was about to answer his question about Muirfield, and his heart was pounding in anticipation. She knew something. She hadn’t asked him what “Muirfield” was or told him that she didn’t know. She was thinking it over.
“My father had some documents about Muirfield,” Celeste said, “that I happened to read. I know it was a classified government experiment that resulted in the deaths of an entire unit of Special Forces soldiers from friendly fire. The government hushed it up and there have been all kinds of wild rumors ever since.”
Stunned, he realized that her account could be one interpretation of what had happened. Substitute “friendly fire” for “on orders from their superiors” and you had exactly what had happened.
“Were any of those rumors described in the document you happened to read?”
“I’m not ashamed that I pried,” she said defiantly. “He keeps so much from me. I should be more in the know. Ignorance leaves me utterly defenseless in situations like this. And it puts him at risk.”
“Well, sometimes people have an overprotective streak,” he said. “We want to look out for the people we love. It’s an instinct.”
“It’s demeaning.”
She sounds like Catherine, he thought. It was, in his mind, a flattering comparison.
He changed the subject. “So what kind of experiment was it?”
“Soldiers were given a drug that was supposed to heighten their reaction times. The Special Forces troops were returning from a firefight and the other soldiers weren’t expecting them. They opened fire and gunned them down.”
Was it possible that Muirfield had lied to the secret society about the fate of Vincent’s platoon? Did Cavanaugh Ellison actually believe that story? Or did Celeste’s father plant misleading information for her to find to keep her out of this most dangerous loop?
Or was this a different failed experiment?
His mind boggled. He tried to figure out a logical path through the forest of lies. What if Cavanaugh had been deliberately kept in ignorance all these years? Was it possible that his delay in Miami was engineered so that he couldn’t attend the gala?
“Why did you ask me if I know about Muirfield?” she asked.
“Reynolds, the man who escaped from Rikers, has admitted that some aspects of the experiments—” Gabe decided to leave open the possibility of other experiments “—were not sanctioned by the Pentagon and that a number of government officials conducted them anyway. He was one of those people. He killed at least three men to keep the secret from getting out.”
Hitching a breath, she smoothed her hair away from her face. “Do you think that’s what’s going on? Reynolds broke out of Rikers to kill my father to keep him silent?”
“Why warn him by leaving the pin behind?” Gabe asked.
Her eyes widened. “By accident? Or to flush Dad out? To make him run? So he could go after him?”
“Reynolds couldn’t know that he would do that. It would make more sense to break out without telegraphing his plans. We can ask your father when we see him.”
Gabe wondered if Ellison himself had orchestrated this entire escapade, possibly out of revenge for Gabe’s busts at the gala. Leave the pin knowing that sooner or later the DA’s office would examine the evidence… and that Gabe would figure out how to trace him?
What if I didn’t? Would he have a plan B? Would he risk his daughter in a scheme like that
? What if she’s in on it? What if she’s steering me right into a trap?
He had quietly placed his Beretta under his seat. He was glad of that now. He couldn’t connect the dots and that made him anxious. His entire life had been a strange journey made in deepest secrecy and punctuated by instances when all was revealed. He was the king of spin, a skill that had helped him survive and made him an excellent ADA, not because he spun the truth during criminal cases but because he could anticipate how the attorneys for the accused would attempt to spin their defenses.
“I just wish he would answer his phone.”
“Me, too,” Gabe said. As far as they could ascertain, Ellison hadn’t moved since they had called, going on over six hours ago. Gabe was concerned. It could mean he was hunkered down, safe and sound.
Or that he was dead.
After a few minutes, she said, “It seems off that we haven’t reached Preston yet. Can your driving directions be wrong?” Before he could protest she picked up his phone, which had been resting in one of the car’s cup holders, and stared at the little map in the window. “Your bars are low. It’s probably the snow.”
She put it back, and when they stopped to get something to eat and stretch their legs, Gabe checked the Internet for dings on Reynolds’ APB and possible leads in Ellison’s disappearance. He couldn’t connect; the signal was too weak.
Gabe put his phone in his pocket as Celeste sighed and hung up her phone again. As they sat facing each other in the booth of a diner that had once been a railroad car, the flicker from a pear-shaped glass candleholder caught the gems in her earrings and necklace and sent scintillating sparks over the walls. They ordered hamburgers and beers and a basket of fries, and as the other diners watched the news, they moved from talking about their mission to inconsequential topics such as the snow and the stories unfolding on TV.
A man from Con Edison, the energy company, named David Whiteside was being interviewed about the blackout. Gabe couldn’t hear what he was saying, but he took note of the name. He wanted to find out who had engineered the blackout, and why. Whoever extracted Reynolds had known it was going to happen. Had someone made it happen specifically for them? He tried to look up Whiteside using his cell but he still had too few bars.
