Harm's Reach

63

Ingrid Prince was waiting for her driver at the rental in Golden. She had returned from New York for the last time to finally pack her things. She sat now on a high stool, elbow bent, leaning with her forearm on the kitchen island, scrolling through texts. They had been popping up on her cell phone all morning, since the Hamptons photo appeared online.

Ingrid held a hand to her belly. Twenty-two weeks gone; her baby conceived on an icy January night in Golden in front of the fire with a handsome boy, fresh from a bar fight. This was her golden child, her golden ticket. And quite by accident! Fate had been kind! And Robert wouldn’t know the difference. Whether the baby would have dark Irish looks from a line of rich Princes, or common Gormans; no one would be able to tell. And if there was ever a reason for her husband to look closer, she was the keeper of the secret he would never want revealed, a secret even the tabloids wouldn’t want to publish. It still turned her stomach to think of it.

She had burned the Special Forces badge. When the package arrived from the Prince mansion, she just thought it would be some more interesting stuff; Robert had shown her some of the things from the first package. She thought it would be jewelry or tattered love letters or something old and exciting. But it wasn’t. It was a badge that meant Desmond Lamb could not possibly have been Robert’s father: he was gone for almost the entire year of 1957; the timing was all wrong. But it was worse than that. And when she had found out, it was too late. Laura Flynn was already pregnant. She had told Laura, she had confided in her in the way that one confides in a dependant; you can tell a true dependant anything. They can’t leave. They have no home, no money without you. She had begged Laura to have an abortion. She would still get paid. Ingrid would pay her. She had done the groundwork — she had researched clinics on Simone’s laptop. Yet, still, Laura had wanted to keep the baby. Who wants to keep a baby that isn’t even theirs, when the mother herself doesn’t want it? It wasn’t a baby, anyway. It was some kind of monster.

She was surprised that Laura had told Conor the day she came to take him away. She was surprised at someone as vulnerable as Laura deciding to run. Laura Flynn was braver than she thought. And Conor, more volatile, more dangerous, and more in love. Didn’t men want no ties? Didn’t sixteen-year-old boys? Why was sex not enough? It was bizarre.

Conor’s phone call to her the night before Laura died: ‘Laura knows something about Robert. She’s on her way here. I have to meet her tomorrow. She wants me to leave with her. But I won’t. She can’t make me. Now’s our chance, Ingrid. She said she was in Chicago, talking to some guy who could get us into Canada and back to Ireland. But now’s our chance. To start a new life. If Robert’s been doing something wrong, if he’s, like, going to go to prison for fraud or something... we can be together...’

That was another thing that turned her stomach. ‘Start a new life’ with Conor Gorman. How ridiculous. What did he think was going to happen? She would do a spread in Harper’s announcing her love for the just-turned-seventeen-years-old nephew of her dead immigrant housekeeper?

She laughed out loud. And at the idea of Robert Prince and fraud. People assume so much about the wealthy. There was no fraud in Robert Prince’s world. There was no taking — only giving; money and love and second chances.

She loved to hear Laura’s stories about the Irish underworld in New York. Particularly the one about Janey Mac — Nicky McMullen — from the dive bar in Yonkers who had fled to Chicago and became Janey Mach III. She had given Laura a new purse when she got pregnant. It had a GPS tag in the lining, expertly stitched. She was carrying her baby, after all. It was not difficult to trace Laura from a throwaway phone. It was not difficult to hire someone to follow her in Chicago, and to pay Janey Mac off — he didn’t give a shit about Frankie Gorman or his delinquent son.

Unfortunately, Nicky McMullen got cold feet when he saw Laura’s bump. Chickenshit.

But for Conor to get rid of her problem was the biggest revelation, though Laura had brought some of it on herself; she had told him too much. He had thought Laura was lying when she said that the Princes were trying for a baby. Conor had believed that all those appointments the Princes were going to was because they were divorcing. Laura must have wondered how Conor could have had a clue what was going on in the Princes’ marriage and why he seemed to care so much. And when his aunt mentioned his father, told him where the deadbeat was, was forced to admit that she had known all along, he had grabbed the gun and told the woman who had saved his life that she was messing up his life. And the impulse, the fear, the love, the hormones, the pain, the everything that had been poured into this one handsome boy exploded. Loser. The panic, the tears, when he called her from his creepy little friend’s cell phone...

At least Conor had proved coachable: rip the tag from the purse, make Robert, anyone, look bad, make me look good. Create just enough suspicion to send people off in different directions. They would be a team; she and Conor would create a little tornado that would throw dust in everyone’s eyes, blind them just a little until a better suspect emerged. Whoever... Robert... the creepy little friend... anyone.

Everyone had secrets. And even the most harmless ones could look sinister through a prism of suspicion.

She thought of the women in the tabloids who had their multi-millionaire husbands by their balls and bank accounts. Incongruous couples, with public declarations of love so effusive they couldn’t possibly be real. Relationships that bloomed in this microclimate of extreme wealth were not about feelings held in hearts, but secrets held over heads. She knew how it worked. When you are invited into the inner circle, you look very carefully around you, you observe. And you look for hiding places, for what lies twisted in silken sheets or behind lifted eyes, what words pass collagen lips, or are bitten back by ultra-white veneers.

With these secrets, I thee wed.

For better and better, for richer and richer.

In her case, the secrets she had uncovered came along after the wedding. Robert had fallen so clearly, so desperately in love she didn’t need secrets for diamonds and golden bands to slide up her ring finger. Secrets were her eternity ring.

Ingrid heard a noise at the front door. Light on her feet, she walked out into the long polished hallway. Her suitcases were at the end by the door: a set of five, olive green, edged in brown leather with accents of gold.

Now, there was banging at the door, hammering. Ingrid froze. The door burst open. She felt a rush of adrenaline.

This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends. This is not how it ends.

She backed into the kitchen, then turned, set to run for the French doors, but she could make out two dark figures standing there. Ingrid was briefly blindsided by her reflection in the glass.

She knew what she looked like to others. She knew what her husband looked like.

A Swedish proverb came to mind: Alla känner apan, men apan känner ingen.

Everyone knows the monkey, but the monkey knows no one.

The back door burst open. She wasn’t expecting women. It was the agent. And the detective.

‘Ingrid Prince,’ said the agent. ‘You are under arrest for Solicitation to Commit Murder in the First Degree.’

Ingrid Prince closed her eyes.

I am innocent. I am innocent. I am innocent.