Fool Me Once

Chapter 31

Christopher Swain’s words echoed in her ears as she walked back to the guest lot.

“Because Joe is dead...”

In the end, it all came back to that nanny cam, didn’t it?

Time to get analytical here. There were three possibilities that explained what she had seen on that nanny cam:

One, the most likely, was that someone had set it up using some kind of Photoshop program. The technology existed. She had only seen the video for a brief time. It could be done easily enough.

Two, almost tied for most likely, Maya had imagined or hallucinated Joe, or in some other way, her mind had played tricks on her and thus conjured up the image of Joe being alive. Eileen Finn liked to send her those optical illusion videos, where you think you’re seeing something and then the camera moves just a little and you realize that your eye has preconceived a certain image. Add in Maya’s PTSD, her meds, her sister’s murder, her guilt about that, the night in Central Park, all the rest... how could Maya really dismiss that as a real possibility?

Three, least likely, Joe was somehow still alive.

If the answer was Two — it was all in her head — there was little to be done about it. She still needed to go through all this because the truth, while it won’t set you free, will help right the world in some way. But if the answer was either One (Photoshop) or Three (Joe was alive), then it meant one thing without question:

Someone was screwing with her big-time.

And if it was either One or Three, it almost certainly meant something else: Isabella had lied. She had seen Joe on that nanny cam video. The only reason Isabella would have pretended not to see Joe, pepper-sprayed Maya, grabbed the SD card, and then gone into hiding was fairly simple: She was in on it.

Maya got back into her car, turned on the engine, and hit her playlist. Imagine Dragons came on telling her not to get too close, it’s dark inside, it’s where her demons hide.

They didn’t know the half of it.

She clicked on the app for the GPS she’d attached to Hector’s car. First off, assuming Isabella was in on it, she wasn’t the kind to act alone. Her mother, Rosa, who had been on the yacht that night, would be in on it. Her brother, Hector, too. Second — man, she was thinking arithmetically today — there was a chance, of course, Isabella had gone someplace far away, but Maya doubted it. She was around. It was just a question of finding her.

She retrieved the gun from her glove box, checked the GPS, and saw that Hector’s truck was currently parked in the servants’ complex at Farnwood. Maya clicked the history button, seeing all the places the truck had traveled over the past few days. The only place that didn’t seem to fit the work pattern of a landscaper was an address he constantly visited in a Paterson, New Jersey, housing project. He could, of course, have friends or a girlfriend there. But something about it didn’t feel right.

So now what?

Even if Isabella was hiding there, it wasn’t as though she could just go to the address and start knocking on doors. She needed to be more proactive. It was coming down to it now. She had most of the answers. She needed to find out the rest and put an end to it once and for all.

Her mobile rang. She saw on the caller ID that it was Shane.

“Hello?”

“What have you done?”

His tone chilled her blood.

“What are you talking about?”

“Detective Kierce.”

“What about him?”

“He knows, Maya.”

She said nothing. The walls were starting to close in on her now.

“He knows I tested that bullet for you.”

“Shane...”

“The same gun killed Claire and Joe, Maya. How the hell can that be?”

“Shane, listen to me. You have to trust me, okay?”

“You keep saying that. ‘Trust me.’ Like it’s some kind of mantra.”

“I shouldn’t need to say it.” Pointless, she thought. There was no way she could explain it to him right now. “I gotta run.”

“Maya?”

She hung up the phone and closed her eyes.

Let it go, she told herself.

She started down the quiet road, distracted by Shane’s call, by what Christopher Swain had told her, by all the emotions and thoughts swirling through her head.

Maybe that explained what happened next.

A van started coming toward her from the opposite direction. The tree-lined road was narrow, so she slowly shifted her vehicle a little to the right to give the van room to pass her. But as the van got close, it suddenly swung to its left, cutting in front of her.

Maya slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the van. Her body jutted forward, restrained by the straps, even as the lizard-instinct part of the brain came to a realization:

She was being attacked.

The van had cut off any forward motion, so she was reaching for the gear to put the car in reverse when she heard the knocking on her window. She looked and saw the gun facing her head. In her peripheral vision, she saw someone else at the window on the passenger side.

“It’s okay.” The man’s voice was hard to hear through the window. “We aren’t here to hurt you.”

How had the man gotten to the side of her car so fast? He couldn’t have gotten out of the van. There wasn’t that kind of time. This had been carefully orchestrated. Someone had realized that she would be at the Solemani Recovery Center. The road was quiet. Very little traffic. So these two men had probably been hiding behind a tree. The van cuts her off. They step out.

Maya just sat very still and considered her options.

“Please step out of the car and come with us.”

Option One: Reach for the gear and shift the car in reverse.

Option Two: Go for the gun in the hip holster.

The problem with both options was simple. The man had his gun at her head. Maybe his friend by the other window did too. She wasn’t Wyatt Earp and this wasn’t the O.K. Corral. If the man wanted to shoot her, she would have no chance of reaching either the gun or the gearshift in time.

Which left Option Three: Get out of the car—

That was when the man with the gun said, “Come on. Joe is waiting.”

The side door of the van began to slide open. Sitting in her car, both hands on the wheel, Maya could feel her heart pounding against her rib cage. The van door stopped halfway. Maya squinted, but she couldn’t see inside. She turned to the man with the gun.

“Joe...?” she said.

“Yeah,” the man said, his voice suddenly tender. “Come on. You want to see him, right?”

She looked at the man’s face for the first time. Then she looked at the other man. He didn’t have a gun in his hand.

Option Three...

Maya started to cry.

“Mrs. Burkett?”

Through the tears, she said, “Joe...”

“Yes.” The man’s voice grew insistent. “Unlock the door, Mrs. Burkett.”

Still crying, Maya weakly fumbled for the unlock button. She pressed it and pulled the door handle. The man stepped back to let the door swing. He still had the gun on her. Maya half fell out of the car. The gunman started to reach for her arm, but Maya, still with the tears, shook her head and said, “No need.”

She straightened up and then stumbled toward the van. The gunman let her go. And that told Maya everything.

The van door slid open a little more.

Four men, Maya calculated. The driver, the van-door opener, the passenger-side guy, the gunman.

As she got closer to the van, all her training, all those hours in the simulator and at the shoot house, started to kick in. She felt an odd calm now, a moment of near Zen, that feeling when you are in the eye of the hurricane. It was all about to happen now, and one way or the other, if she came out of it alive or dead, she was being proactive. She wasn’t controlling her own destiny — that sort of thinking was nonsense — but when you’ve trained and when you’re prepared, you can act with a sort of comforting confidence.

Still stumbling, Maya turned her head just a little, just the slightest bit, because what she saw now would decide everything. The gunman had not grabbed hold of her when she got out of the car. That was the reason she had poured on the fake tears and semihysterics. To see how he would react. He had fallen for it. He had let her go.

He hadn’t frisked her.

That meant three things...

She glanced behind her. The man had indeed lowered his gun to his side. He had relaxed. He felt she was no longer an active threat.

One, no one had warned the man that she’d be armed...

Maya had been planning the sequence from the moment she started with the tears. The tears were designed to act as a weapon — to make the kidnappers relax; to make them underestimate her; to give her time, before getting out of the car, to plan exactly what she would do.

Two, Joe would know that she’d be armed...

Her hand was already near her hip as she started to run. Here’s a fun fact most people don’t know. Shooting a handgun with accuracy is difficult. Shooting a handgun at a moving target is very difficult. Seventy-six percent of the time, trained police officers miss the shot between three and nine feet. The percentage is north of ninety percent for civilians.

So you always moved.

Maya looked toward the back of the van. Then, without so much as a misstep or warning or even hesitation, she tucked into a roll, hit the pavement as she pulled her Glock out of its holster, and came up aiming directly at the man with the gun. The man had noticed the move, had started to react, but it was too late.

Maya aimed for the center of his chest.

In real life, you never shoot to wound. You point the weapon at the center of the chest, the largest target, the best chance of hitting at least something should your aim be off, and you just keep firing.

Which is what Maya did.

The man went down.

Three, the conclusion: Joe had not sent them.

Several things happened at once.

Maya kept rolling, kept moving, so she wasn’t a stationary target. She turned to where the other man was, the one who had been at her passenger side. She swung her gun up, ready to fire, but the man ducked away behind her car.

Keep moving, Maya...

The van door slammed shut. The engine roared to life. Maya was behind it now, using it as a shield in case the other guy came up firing. She obviously couldn’t stay. The van was about to move, probably in reverse, probably trying to crush her.

Maya made the instinctive decision.

Flee.

The man with the gun was down. The guys in the van were panicking. The final man was hidden behind her.

When in doubt, do the simple thing.

Still using the van as something of a shield, Maya ran into the woods. The van shot backward, almost hitting her. Maya stayed to its side, and then, fully blocked off from the guy by her passenger door, she turned and ran the last few feet.

Don’t stop...

The woods were too thick for her to look behind her while she was running, but at some point, she ducked behind a tree and risked a quick look. The man who had been hiding behind the passenger seat was not following her. He sprinted straight for the van and dove in while the van was still moving. The van completed the K-turn and, with tires peeling the pavement, shot back down the road.

They had left the gunman she had shot by the side of the road.

The entire episode, from the moment Maya tucked and rolled until now, had probably taken fewer than ten seconds.

Now what?

The decision took almost no time. She had no choice really. If she called it in or waited for the authorities, she would certainly be arrested. Being in the park when Joe was shot, finding Tom Douglass, the ballistics tests, now another man shot with her own gun — there would be no quick explanation.

She hurried back to the road. The gunman was flat on his back, legs splayed.

He could be faking it, but Maya doubted it. Still she kept her gun at the ready.

No need. He was dead.

She had killed the man.

No time to dwell on that. A car would be coming any second. She quickly went through his pockets and grabbed his wallet. No time to check his ID now. She debated grabbing his phone — she wouldn’t be able to use hers anymore — but that seemed too risky for obvious reasons. Finally, she considered taking his gun, which was still clutched in his hand, but that was really the only evidence, if everything else went south, that she had acted in self-defense.

Plus, she still had her Glock.

She had already done the calculations in her head. The gunman’s body was near the side of the road. It wouldn’t take much to push it two or three feet and then let it roll down the embankment.

With one quick glance to make sure no cars were approaching, that was exactly what Maya did.

The gunman rolled more easily than she would have thought, or maybe adrenaline had made her stronger. He slid straight down, his limp body smacking into a tree.

He was, at least temporarily, out of sight.

The body would be found, of course. Maybe in an hour. Maybe in a day. But in the meantime, it would buy Maya enough time.

She rushed back to her car and slid into the driver’s seat. Her phone was going crazy now. Shane calling her back. Probably Kierce starting to wonder what the hell was going on too. In the distance, a car started coming toward her. Maya kept her calm. She started up her car and gently hit the accelerator. She was just another visitor departing the Solemani Recovery Center. If there were CCTV cameras anywhere nearby, they would show a van speeding off and then, a minute or two later, a normal-driving BMW that had an excuse to be in the area driving by.

Deep breaths, Maya. In and out. Flex, relax...

Five minutes later, she was back on the highway.

Maya put some distance between herself and the dead body.

She turned off her phone, and then, because she wasn’t sure if the phone could still be tracked, she smashed it against the steering wheel. Thirty miles later, she stopped in a CVS parking lot. She checked the gunman’s wallet. No ID, but he did have four hundred dollars in cash. Perfect. Maya was low and didn’t want to use an ATM.

She bought three disposable cell phones and a baseball cap with the cash. She checked her face in the store’s bathroom mirror. A disaster. She washed up as best she could and threw her hair into a ponytail. She put the cap on and came out looking presentable.

Where would the kidnappers go?

They were probably no longer a threat. There was an outside chance that they’d go to her house and wait for her, but that seemed very risky. The van was likely stolen or a rental or had fake plates, something, so they would probably just call it a day.

Still she had no intention of going to her house.

She called Eddie. He answered on the second ring. She told him where to meet her. He said that he was on his way and mercifully didn’t ask any follow-up questions. This too was a risk, but it was minimal. Still, when she got closer to the Growin’ Up Day Care, she gave the surroundings a serious examination. Interestingly enough, Growin’ Up was almost set up the way you might an army base. You really couldn’t approach it without being seen. There were layers of security. Sure, someone could shoot their way in, but really, with the buzz-locked doors by the entranceway and into each room, you’d be able to contact authorities — the police station was a block away — in no time.

She circled one more time. Nothing suspicious.

When she saw Eddie’s car enter the lot, she pulled in behind him. The Glock was back in her waistband. Eddie parked. Maya parked next to him and got out of the car. She slid into the passenger seat next to him.

“What’s going on, Maya?”

“I need to sign you up so you’re able to pick up Lily.”

“And that weird phone number you called me from?”

“Let’s just do this, okay?”

Eddie looked at her. “Do you know who killed Claire and Joe?”

“Yes.”

He waited. Then he said, “But you won’t tell me.”

“Not right now, no.”

“Because...?”

“Because I don’t have time. Because Claire wanted to protect you.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be protected.”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Like hell it doesn’t. Maybe it’s time I helped.”

“Right now,” she said, “you can help by coming inside with me.” She reached for the knob and pulled it. With a heavy sigh, Eddie did the same thing. When he turned his back, when he started to step out of the car, Maya jammed an envelope into the bottom of his laptop bag. Then she got out too.

Miss Kitty buzzed them in and helped them fill out the paperwork. As they took the ID photograph of Eddie, Maya looked into the sun-bright yellow room and spotted her daughter. Seeing Lily made her heart feel suddenly light. Lily wore a smock, one of Maya’s old shirts, and her hands were covered in paint. There was a big smile on the little girl’s face. Maya stood there and felt a hand reach inside her chest and squeeze.

Miss Kitty came up behind her. “Do you want to go inside and say hello?”

Maya shook her head. “Are we done here?”

“We are. Your brother-in-law can now pick her up at any point.”

“I don’t have to call to give him permission?”

“That was what you requested, right?”

“It is.”

“And that’s what we’ve done.”

Maya nodded, her eyes still on Lily. She took one more look at her daughter and started to turn away. She faced Miss Kitty. “Thank you.”

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” She looked past her at Eddie. “We better go.”

When they were both out in the parking lot, Maya asked to borrow Eddie’s phone. He handed it to her without objection. She signed into her GPS tracking app via the website.

Hector’s truck was back at that Paterson location.

Good. Time to stay proactive. She debated asking Eddie if she could keep his phone, but someone might eventually figure that out and track it. She handed it back to him.

“Thank you.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

When they reached their cars, Maya said, “Wait a second.” She opened the back of her car, found the toolbox, took out a screwdriver.

“What are you doing?” Eddie asked.

“I’m switching our license plates.”

She didn’t think Kierce would put an APB out on her yet, but there was no harm in being overcautious. Maya started on the front bumper. Eddie took out a dime, used it as screwdriver, and started on the back. Two minutes later, they were done.

She started to get back into her car. Eddie just stood there and watched her.

Maya stopped for a second. There were a million things she wanted to tell him — about Claire, about Joe, about everything. She opened her mouth, but she of all people should know that nothing good would come out of it. Not today. Not now.

“I love you, Eddie.”

He used his hand to shade the sunset from his eyes. “I love you too, Maya.”

She got into the car and started for Paterson.