Stephanie hits SEND on the encrypted email. Nothing to do now but wait.
DARK HEART
Catherine,
Mexico City, Mexico
We’re all prowling like caged cats.
The fissures in the Harris family are deepening under the stress of waiting. Lisa and Steve circle tensely around each other. Dakota is surly. Finn remains the volatile and often unreachable hub of this family’s centrifugal force.
Steve Harris is ready. I’ve practiced with him time and again. I’m sure he’ll make a credible witness. My plan to fly him back to the States to be deposed is firmly in place. I’ve also filmed his statement for a timed release to the media. Knox Pharmaceuticals can bring on all the high-powered lawyers and low-morals thugs they want; we are going to win.
The Harrises will be safer after Steve’s testimony is on the record, but they will have made powerful enemies. Silence may no longer be a motive for their deaths but revenge may very well be.
I haven’t broached this with them yet, as I’m taking one thing at a time, but it will be my recommendation that after the trial the Harrises disappear into completely new lives, courtesy of the Burial Society. I expect that to be a difficult conversation.
Another difficult conversation will have to be had with Gabi. The incident with the gun has left me sour and unsettled; our usual easy understanding feels irrevocably compromised. This is the last time I will come to this house in Mexico City, but Gabi deserves a proper goodbye.
From across the expanse of the room I watch her cooking, bare feet firmly planted, quick fingers kneading dough, chopping onions, tearing cilantro. Lisa Harris plays with Finn, using lumps of dough to make little snowmen. Steve Harris reads one of the U.S. newspapers Gabi brought in earlier today. Dakota’s disappeared upstairs with her trove of English language celebrity magazines, “desperate,” as she announced, “for some fucking life.”
Turning my attention to my laptop and a variety of incoming reports, I open a missive from Stephanie that’s just been decrypted on my end. It contains good news, in that the Lombards are safe and sound, but my gut twists as the attached photographs load into view. I recognize the man Peter and Eva Lombard identify as working for Holly: Derrick Cotter.
Cotter’s a fixer for Holly, I know that much, although I have never asked too many questions about the specifics of his job description. Having my own secrets made me reluctant to press Holly on his. All I know is that Cotter came up from the same rough neighborhood that spawned the future financial titan Forrest Holcomb. Best friends since they were six, absolute loyalty is their creed.
These photographs certainly suggest that Derrick Cotter’s involved with the Lombards’ attacker. But why? What is Cotter protecting? Or after?
I consider Peter Lombard’s deduction that he was used as a mule. I wonder, and not for the first time, exactly what services Derrick provides for Holly. Has Derrick gotten his hands dirty so Holly can keep his clean?
I am broken. Therefore Holly must be too. How else could he ever love me? The startling and vicious stab of insecurity skewers me, as old as my soul.
Maybe it’s not only Derrick who’s gotten his paws dirty. Maybe Holly’s hands are filthy. Have I been unable to see the blackness within him because of my own dark heart? Have I idealized a man who represents the very things I despise?
My fingers fly along the keypad of one of my phones before I even know what I’m doing. Holly picks up on the second ring. He grunts a gruff “Hallo,” his voice deep and scratchy. A woman’s voice in the background mumbles sleepily, a phrase I can’t quite make out. I imagine his wife, Miranda, in a satin eyeshade and a filmy peignoir, irritated by this callous interruption of her beauty slumber. “Hallo?” Holly repeats, his tone impatient. “Who is it?”
I hang up the phone.
Have I been played? Used? I can’t talk to him until I think this through. My brain is spinning.
Why did Holly enlist me to look for Eva Lombard? Surely it can’t be the innocent concern he expressed for a valued employee and his spouse. Not if he’s involved in some way with the assaults on them. But why then?
Was he afraid he’d gotten the Lombards unwittingly involved in something for which he felt responsible? Holly knows enough about who I am and what I do to know my code doesn’t extend to protecting criminals. Quite the opposite. Was he trying to make things right for the Lombards in some way?
There I go again, looking to keep him up on that fucking pedestal. Why should I believe he respects my code? What do I really know about the man anyway? He’s no more than a body I traded fluids with a long time ago.
What if he’s setting me up? What if I’ve put Stephanie and Jake in danger of exposure? Or worse?
Why is my experience of love irrevocably coupled with an expectation of betrayal?
Hell. I know the answer to that question, as much as I want to avoid it.
“Let’s go, Cathy. Let’s go.”
My brain is buzzing again, my heart pounding. Despite the audible static I’m positive I’m radiating, the Harrises and Gabi seem oblivious to my state.
I saunter into the kitchen. Admire Gabi’s ingredients and Finn’s snowman. I casually crack open a bottle of añejo tequila, welcoming the acrid scent in my nostrils. I pour a shot and slug it back, relishing the scorch of the liquid down my throat. I need to think.
“Let’s go, Cathy. Let’s go.”
I leave the shot glass on the counter and take the bottle of tequila out onto the terrace.
Holly. The last time I saw him, he asked me to meet him in Paris. I didn’t ask why. It was shortly after his marriage to Miranda, a London wedding designed to rival a royal’s. I’d followed the breathless tabloid reporting of the affair, celebrity invites, rare sky-blue sun-orchids imported from Tasmania, Swarovski crystal centerpieces, every choice designed to flaunt excess. Holly’s not averse to a show, but I suspected this particular event was all Miranda.
We’d met at our usual hotel, the Mandarin Oriental. Fell into a fevered tangle of limbs, our hunger for each other untarnished by time, distance, or his new marriage. Then we talked for hours, sharing our thoughts on everything from global politics to cryptocurrency to the Paris spring collections, before proximity stoked our physical fires again.
As dawn broke outside our windows, Holly finally drifted into slumber. I stared at the softened lines of his sleeping face. Our love was perfect within the private hothouse we crafted when we could, although I suspected it would bloom bright and then rapidly wither out of it. Just like the rare orchids Miranda demanded grace her wedding.
I tamed one of his wild brows with an index finger. Planted a soft kiss on his bearded cheek. I got dressed and crept out while Holly was still sleeping. That was over two years ago.
Now I must face the truth. I may have deluded myself about everything: the man, the belief that in at least this one relationship I had a kind of home. Or maybe that’s exactly what I had, except more of the sick and twisted kind of home that is all I’ve ever known.
I tip back the bottle of tequila. Take a few long swallows as I stare at the bruised lavender sky.
TAKEN
Eva Lombard,
Kowloon
A vicious pounding on the front door of Yuan’s hideaway sends Eva running from the bathroom, Peter at her heels. Stevie’s poised on her tiptoes at the peephole, peering out.
“I think it’s your friend Alex,” she reports.
Stevie steps aside and Eva takes a look. It is Alex. He’s red-faced and haggard, short of breath. Eva flings open the door.
“What is it?” she entreats. “What’s happened?”
“They’ve taken Ian,” Alex rasps. “I got a text.”
“What did it say? Who’s taken him?” The knot of dread already nestled in Eva’s belly expands tentacles throughout her entire body.
&nbs
p; “They snatched him right off the street. He was with his mother! Just outside her flat! They want your camera with the card you used when you took those pictures at the Sly Fox. They’ll kill him if we go to the police!”
“When do they want to meet?” The question comes from John.
“Dawn. The text says we’re to go alone to the Star Ferry car park and wait.”
“Which side?” John wants to know.
“This side. Kowloon.” Alex’s eyes skitter across the people in the room as if seeing them all for the first time. “Ev, are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” Eva reassures him, although she’s anything but. Stupid twat. She’s gutted with guilt. She brought this on Alex and Ian. She puts a hand on Alex’s shoulder. I’m so sorry. She becomes aware of Peter’s burning gaze and lifts her hand away.
“You must be Peter,” Alex says to Peter. “But who in bloody hell are you two?”
“Long story,” says Stevie. “But we’re here to help. I’m Stevie and this is John.”
Alex turns to Eva. “Can they help?”
“They’ve done decently so far,” says Peter, inserting himself into the conversation. “But you have me at a disadvantage. Who’s Ian and who in bloody hell are you?”
A fresh wash of shame churns into the guilt that already threatens to overwhelm Eva. “Pete, this is Alex Blake. Old friend from when I lived here. He helped hide me. But that’s hardly the point. Ian’s his son. He’s four.”
A terrible silence descends over them.
John is the first to break it. “There’s something off about their demand,” he says thoughtfully. “How do they know you haven’t copied the photos? Given them to the police already, for that matter?”
“I haven’t,” insists Eva.
“Right, but they don’t know that,” John replies. “That might be our first order of business. Make some copies and build a fail-safe. But still, why didn’t they even ask whether you’d duplicated them?”
“You know,” Peter says slowly, “when I was attacked in our hotel room, the guy said something about ‘not even knowing what we had’ with Eva’s photographs. We still don’t. Two men at a table together means nothing unless one of them has beaten the crap out of you. Without us, there’s no evidence of any crimes we know about or can prove.”
“In which case, if I were them,” interjects Stevie cheerfully, “I’d make sure you were all dead.”
Eva catches the admonitory look John gives Stevie. “What?” Stevie questions him in response. “These assholes have made it clear they’re desperate to hide whatever it is they’re up to. I’m just being realistic.”
Another sticky silence descends.
“I think Stevie and I are off the radar for these folks, am I right?” John finally asks thoughtfully. “We’ve been behind them and around them but never in full view.”
“Except for the brothel,” Stevie chimes in.
“True enough,” John agrees. He strokes his Vandyke. “But all they’ll remember is a beard, sunglasses, and a baseball cap.”
“What are you thinking?” Eva demands.
“I’m weighing our advantages,” John answers. “Figuring out what they know and what we know.”
Eva watches as John and Stevie look at each other, engaged in a wordless communication. It’s absurd to put their faith in these two barely grown kids, but are they the only chance they have?
Alex breaks the silence. “Screw your help! This is my son we’re talking about. I’m doing exactly as they say. You, me, and the camera are going, Eva. No one else.”
Peter bristles. “Absolutely not. There is no fucking way my wife is going there alone with you. I’ll go instead.”
Stevie steps between the two men. “Now, now, boys, don’t make me give you a time-out,” she says, raising admonitory hands. In other circumstances it would be funny; they are each a head taller than she.
Alex defiantly meets Peter’s stare. “He’s my son. I’m calling the shots.”
Eva’s eyes flicker between the two men’s hardening features. Her heart sinks.
This is all my fault. A child—Alex’s child—is in danger, and it’s all my fault.
Stupid twat.
She has no choice. She will do whatever Alex wants.
GUILT
Magali Guzman,
New York City
Maggie has never seen Special Agent in Charge Bates this furious. She, Ryan Johnson, and the four other agents who have been actively pursuing leads in the Betsy and Bear Elliott kidnapping case stand awkwardly before him as Bates gives directives in a voice sharp as cut glass, steam practically rising from his silver-haired head.
It’s been learned that the younger sister of one of Roger Elliott’s aides lives in Berwyn, Pennsylvania. This young woman had followed her brother’s instructions to wear gloves, extract the letter addressed to Roger Elliott from the larger envelope in which it had been mailed to her, and then mail it back to Elliott so it was postmarked locally from Berwyn.
Stupidity won out, as it so often does with criminals. The aide didn’t tell his sister the details of the scheme because he was afraid she would gossip. But she’d been following the details avidly, lording her tenuous connection to the headline-making case over her friends and classmates. When an intrepid reporter at the New York Daily News leaked the first word of the ransom note, little sister saw it online and began to wonder.
When the wider press began to pick up on the story, Elliott got ahead of the game. He made a television appearance in which he admitted to manufacturing the ransom demand, but also argued his motives were noble: Neither the police nor the pricey private investigators he’d hired had any clues about the whereabouts of his wife and child. He just wanted to literally make a federal case out of it in his desperation to find them.
Furious at Elliott for the deception and with no known grounds for federal jurisdiction, Bates shuts the entire investigation down. His last order is for a detailed accounting of all monies spent on “this bullshit.” The agents are dismissed.
“What a fucker,” opines Johnson about Elliott as the agents thread through the hallways of the Federal Building and back to their cubicles.
“I feel for the guy a little,” Maggie confesses. “Desperation makes people do stupid shit.”
“Sure it’s not a crush, Guzman? I see the way you look at Elliott. Sure you’re not going to set your hooks for the rich widower?”
“Fuck off, Johnson.”
“Oh, that’s original.”
“Like your shit is? You’re stuck in some last century version of toxic masculinity. You don’t deserve original. And anyway, maybe Betsy and Bear are still alive.”
“Elliott really got you drinking his Kool-Aid, didn’t he? You taste anything else?”
“Johnson, you waste so much time being a dick, I don’t know how you get anything else done.” Maggie ducks into the ladies’ room.
She doesn’t need to pee, but splashes some tepid water on her face and twists her hair up on the top of her head, shaking off Johnson’s stench. She glares at her reflection in the mirror.
Johnson’s right about one thing: She does feel sorry for Roger Elliott; the urgency of his concern feels genuine to her. More than that, though, she’s irritated by the puzzle.
Where are Betsy and Bear Elliott? People slip through the cracks; Maggie knows that all too well. No woman or child should be able to vanish off the face of this earth without a trace, but it happens all the time, horrible but true. It doesn’t usually happen to the well-off and well-connected, though. That these two, with all of their assets and social infrastructure, should have done so is even more perplexing.
Unless it was voluntary. Unless Betsy used those very assets and connections precisely in order to disappear so seamlessly. Maggie turns that possibility over in her head. Up u
ntil now, the Bureau’s focus has been radiating outward from the ransom note. But with the note discredited, could the answer lie somewhere back in the myriad interviews and statements taken from the Elliotts’ friends and neighbors? Someone must have a clue about where Betsy and Bear are. Even if they are dead. She’d snapped back at Ryan, but she too knows the statistical odds.
Maggie sighs. Speculation is useless. This investigation is over. Finito. Bates couldn’t have been clearer about that.
She can’t help it that in the back of her mind a series of questions, suppositions, assumptions, and re-examination of those assumptions ticks steadily on like clockwork.
A woman and a little boy are missing. How can she just let that go?
MIST
Eva Lombard,
Star Ferry Car Park, Kowloon
Low-lying fog snakes across the darkness of Victoria Harbour and wends its way through the largely deserted parking lot in front of the ferry terminal. Eva, Alex, and Peter enter the lot three abreast, Eva in the middle. No more than a handful of cars along the perimeter are visible because of the dark skies and thick mist. Three dormant, tethered ferries gently rock on the current.
Eva glances at Peter but can’t read the expression on his face. She takes a peek at Alex. His features are creased with worry; his hands balled into fists. Her own cut palm pulses hotly underneath its white bandage.
They reach the center of the car park. The very first hints of dawn lend a pink tinge to the gray shroud covering the pier. Alex spins in a circle, eyes scanning hopelessly for a glimpse of Ian. Tension explodes out of him. “Okay. We’re here. It’s dawn. We have the camera. No police. We did everything they asked.” He shoots an angry glance at Peter. “Except for bringing along this fuckwit.”
The Empty Bed Page 20
