No Way Back

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I woke up, hearing the whoosh of rushing water outside. For a moment it filled me with peace, a sound I had awakened to a hundred times, one that always made me feel like everything was calm and right in my life. And that usually meant my family was around me.

Then I realized where I was, and the reality of the night before came crashing back to me. Not like the peaceful brook outside a country home. But like a raging flood of dread. A tsunami of darkness and nightmare I never saw coming, taking with it every plank and brick I had built my life on, sweeping it all away in an instant like a dark torrent of debris.

I blinked my eyes open. I sat up and looked around the familiar living room of our ski house in Vermont. The truth knifed into me, like a punch in the solar plexus. I had driven here in the dead of the night. Arrived here at four in the morning. Exhausted. Not knowing where else to go. I just needed a place to collapse and think. Think what to do. Who I could contact. I opened the door and hurled myself onto the living room couch and just passed out. I slept like a corpse, hiding from my haunting dreams. The sun cut through the room. My watch read 9:30 A.M. The truth dug into me that if I were here, and not back in my own home, then what I’d been praying was just an awful dream was real. Exactly the way my mind was rebelling against remembering it.

Please, please, don’t let me really be here…

I looked around and saw the antique signs we collected. CHEAPCORN, 5C. HOOFITTODIAMONDGRAINANDCATTLE. The vintage board games Dave scoured flea markets for displayed on the wooden shelves.

The vintage pinball machine in the corner.

I recalled how I had pulled over to the side of the highway, somewhere in Massachusetts, and called the kids. I woke Neil in the middle of the night at school.

“Jeez, Wendy, what’s going on?”

“Neil, something terrible has happened. To your father…” I did my best to tell him; the words fell from my lips like stones off a ledge. “Dave’s dead. He’s been killed, Neil. I’m so sorry…” Then in the vaguest, clumsiest way I tried to tell him what happened. I knew it wouldn’t make any sense. Only make me appear guilty and all mixed up. Agents coming to our house in the night. “What agents?” he asked, becoming clearheaded. Shots as I tried to escape.

“Escape from what, Wendy? What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean, Dad’s dead? He just called me earlier today. You’re sounding crazy…” He was an eighteen-year-old kid, and I was telling him his father had been killed, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell him why.

“What are you saying, Wendy?”

“Neil, honey, I need you to trust me and do something for me,” I said, urgency coming through the desperation. “I want you to go to your aunt Ruth’s and uncle Rob’s in Boston. First thing tomorrow morning. Just go! Don’t ask me why. This is important. You’re going to hear some crazy things… about what happened to your father. About me… Sweetheart, all I can tell you is they’re not true. I loved your dad very much, and now I’ve done something, I don’t know how, that’s gotten him killed. I just don’t want you to believe what they may be saying-”

“Saying?” His sleep-strained voice grew elevated in exasperation. “What are you talking about, Wendy? What’s happened? What can’t you tell me?”

Tears rushed into my eyes. I only wish I knew.

“Neil, you’ve always trusted me like your own mother. And I think you know that’s exactly how I’ve always felt about you. Like you’re my own! And now you just have to trust me, honey. I can’t be with you just now. It won’t be safe. For you. Something’s happened and I need to sort it out. I know I’m sounding crazy. I know I’m not telling you what you want to hear. Just get to your uncle Rob’s. It’ll be safe there. And please, I beg you, Neil, don’t tell a soul where you’re heading. Not even your roommates.” I knew the people who were looking for me could find him. Could do to him what they had done to Dave. “Just go, first thing in the morning, okay? Promise me that, honey-”

“This isn’t a joke, is it, Wendy?” he said, fighting back tears.

“No, honey, it’s not a joke. I wish it was. Just promise me you’ll go, okay?”

Now he was weeping. “Okay…”

“And I give you my word, baby, whatever you may hear, it’s not the truth. I swear to you on that! Now go, I have to call Amy. I’ll be in touch as soon as I can.” I heard him sniffling, trying to sort through the shock and confusion and grief. “I love you, baby.”

“I know. I love you too, Wendy.”

I hung up, the bass drum inside me beating through my brain. Then I did it all over again, with Dave’s daughter, Amy, six hours ahead in Spain. She was just heading off to class. Amy, who had always had issues with me. She was nine when Dave started seeing me, a year after separating from her mother. Old enough to feel like I had stolen him away from her, and kept him from ever going back. I understood. It just took her a while to learn to truly trust me. But eventually we worked it out. Neil was always my baby. I’d lived with him since he was eight. How I wanted to put my arms around them both. I needed to. I’d just lost my partner in life as well.

My world was crumbling too…

I knew I couldn’t stay here for very long. It was no secret we owned the house. Once word got out-maybe it already had!-someone would surely come by and check. The West Dover police. Or one of the neighbors. I got up and flicked on the TV, hoping to hear something about what was going on. I went into the kitchen and put on some coffee, then trudged over to the computer we kept there and punched in Google News.

I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for. To find nothing-like none of it had ever happened. Which would still mean my husband was dead, and that a government kill squad hadn’t even informed the police and were trying to silence me.

Or what I saw, the third article down.

Which stopped my heart as quickly as if a syringe of paralyzing fluid had been injected into it.

PERSONOFINTERESTINNEWYORKTRIPLEMURDERNAMED.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Numb, I focused on the headline and knew what everyone must be thinking. My kids. My family. Pam.

Anyone who knew me.

My eyes riveted on my name. Wendy Stansi Gould.

I almost retched, my name juxtaposed with such horrible crimes. But there it was, hitting me squarely in the eyes. Taking away my breath. I could barely move the cursor, my hands were shaking so noticeably.

The article was from the AP, and posted only eight minutes earlier.

“A person of interest has been named in the string of Metro New York shooting deaths that began Wednesday night in a posh midtown hotel room and ended in an affluent suburb where the husband of the person police are seeking was found dead.”

Found dead? Dave wasn’t “found dead.” He was killed. Something already didn’t seem right to me.

“Wendy Stansi Gould, 39, whose husband, David Michael Gould, was found shot to death at his Pelham, N.Y., home, is being sought in connection with his and two other shooting deaths: a man identified as Curtis Kitchner, a freelance journalist, and a person yet to be identified, said to be a federal law enforcement agent. Both were shot in Mr. Kitchner’s room at the Kitano Hotel. Ms. Gould is suspected to have been present at both crime scenes.”

I felt the blood rush out of my face.

“Police report that Ms. Stansi Gould was seen with Mr. Kitchner at the hotel bar only minutes before he was found dead in his hotel room, the result of an apparent shooting incident with the unidentified law enforcement agent. Soon after, Ms. Gould was spotted fleeing the hotel.”

“Of course I was fleeing!” I said out loud. I was scared for my fucking life that they were trying to kill me!

“Later, when investigators arrived at her house in Westchester,” I read on, “they found the body of Ms. Gould’s husband in the kitchen of their tony Pelham Manor home.”

What! My stomach started to come up. Dave wasn’t shot in the kitchen. He was shot in my car. As we tried to escape. A numbness began to take hold of me as I started to see exactly what was going on.

“A 9mm handgun was also found at the house, which is now being tested to determine if it matches the weapon used in the shooting of the law enforcement agent in Mr. Kitchner’s hotel room. An unnamed police source suggested the make and caliber could prove to be a match.”

The same gun. That was impossible. I’d left the gun on the bed in Curtis’s room. I tried to think back to the gun Agent Number Two had used to shoot Dave in my car.

I never saw it, of course. I was speeding by.

I read the section again as my stomach turned upside down.

“No, no, no!” I shouted. “That’s a complete lie! It didn’t happen that way at all!”

They shot Dave in the car, not inside the house. And the gun from the hotel couldn’t be there. Unless… I began to see the script.

Unless they took it.

Unless they had taken it directly from Curtis’s room and used it on Dave. I didn’t have to even finish reading to see how incredibly incriminating this looked. They were framing me for Dave’s death, just as they were trying to frame Curtis at the hotel, make it seem like he was the one who had drawn on Hruseff.

“No!” I shouted again. “No. That’s not how it was at all!”

“Ms. Gould was seen drinking in the company of Mr. Kitchner at the hotel bar shortly before they moved upstairs. A police spokesman speculated she may have panicked and grabbed a gun when some confrontation between Mr. Kitchner and the second victim took place in Mr. Kitchner’s room.”

Panicked? Of course, I panicked! The bastard murdered a man right in front of my eyes. He was about to turn his gun on me!

I clicked to the next page. “After fleeing the hotel, it is presumed Ms. Gould made her way back to her home, where after a possible altercation with her husband, she shot him as well, and fled. Her Range Rover SUV was reported missing from the garage.”

Gripped by nausea, I scrolled through the rest of the article, numbly coming to accept how this would all look to the world. To my kids! The whole thing had been twisted. Twisted to make it look like I had killed that agent in a panic and fled. Then made it home and killed Dave.

In horror, I saw how every detail about the entire evening would only back up this very scenario. Even Pam, who would attest to how upset I’d been about my argument with Dave the night before. How I’d mentioned this cute stranger at the bar. As if I’d scoped him out.

It was all, all going to back up exactly how they wanted it to look. I read on, until I crashed headfirst into the one moment I regretted from my own past that now was twisted to fit in too:

Ms. Gould worked in financial sales and studied law at Fordham University. She was a Nassau County police detective assigned to the Street Crime Unit, who resigned in 2003 after she and two other members of the unit were involved in the shooting death of an unarmed twelve-year-old boy in Hempstead. Ms. Gould, then 26, and two other detectives were brought up on charges of reckless discharge of a deadly weapon after Jamal Wilkes was shot five times while being chased through an abandoned building. Sergeant Joseph Esterhaus, the team leader, discharged his weapon eight times believing he had seen a weapon in Mr. Wilkes’s hand. He and fellow detective Thomas Swayze were charged but ultimately cleared in a departmental review. Ms. Gould, Wendy Stansi then, who fired her weapon twice, neither shot striking the victim, was not criminally charged and left the force. Ultimately, no weapons were found on him, only a plastic water bottle, prompting outcries of the reckless use of firearms and racial profiling.

Senior Homeland Security agent Alton Dokes announced that “as one of the victims was an agent of the Federal government, federal authorities would be taking the lead in this case.”

I stared at the screen, my body encased in sweat. I could only imagine what anyone reading this would now think of me. What my own children would think.

That I was a loose cannon. Of questionable moral character. That I had done this kind of thing before. That I had killed their father. With the same gun I had taken after panicking and killing a federal agent.

After sleeping with someone I had met at a bar just an hour before!

You have to believe me, I had begged them last night on the phone. You’re going to hear some things…

Not to mention that the very people now in charge of trying to apprehend me were the ones who had set it all in motion. Who had the most to gain by keeping me silent.

The most nerve-racking, sickening feeling knotted up in me. If I ended up in their hands, I didn’t know what would happen. These agents had already tried to kill me. Twice. And here I was at our house in Vermont, which was easily traceable. The news report had been posted only ten minutes ago.

I had to get out of here now!

I threw on some new clothes, a T-shirt and a blue Patagonia pullover over my jeans. I bundled a few other things together-clothes, toiletries, the laptop-and hurled them into a duffel bag from the ski room, grabbed a parka, and ran downstairs. I was about to toss them into the Range Rover when I realized my car was no longer safe to be driving now. An idea hit me. Our neighbor across the street, Jim Toby, was a New Yorker who kept an Expedition in his garage up here. It was a Thursday. He and Cindy wouldn’t be up. I knew the security code. We’d been watching over each other’s ski houses for years.

I started up the Range Rover and drove it around the back of the house, under the deck, so it was out of sight. Anyone who searched the house would easily find it, but at least someone just passing by wouldn’t realize I’d been there.

I lugged the duffel and my jacket across the street to Jim’s, a modernized A-frame from back in the sixties. I punched the security code-his and Cindy’s wedding anniversary, 7385-into his garage panel. The door slid up, and the familiar navy SUV was parked there just as I’d hoped. I tossed the duffel into the backseat and hopped behind the wheel. The keys were in the well; I drove out, closing the garage door behind me. I headed straight down the hill, my heart pounding insanely inside me, not a clue in the world where I would head. Suddenly I saw flashing lights appear ahead of me; two state police cars sped up the hill. I held my breath. My rational side told me I was safe in this car; no one would stop me. But my nerves jumped out of control. I closed my eyes and averted my face as they shot by.

I blew out a relieved but anxious breath. It was clear where they were heading.

If I’d only left five minutes later, I would have been caught.

I knew I couldn’t do this forever. I had one chance, and that was to turn myself in to someone who would hear my story first. I drove down the hill toward West Dover, the realization beating through me that I was a fugitive in three murders now.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It’s funny, how you might not speak to a person for years, someone who was once a key part of your life. But then, when you need someone in a moment of crisis, theirs is the one name that comes to mind.

In my case, that was Joe Esterhaus.

Joe took me under his wing when I was a rookie on the Nassau County police force, and I guess he caused me to leave it too. I come from a family of cops. My father was one. He and Joe came up together. My older brother too, out of the One Hundred and Fifth Precinct in Queens, and he happened to be on assignment in lower Manhattan and rushed into the South Tower on his twenty-eighth birthday when it was hit by a plane the morning of September 11. It was why I signed up, as a twenty-four-year-old bond salesperson on Wall Street, trying to give some honor to his life. I never really wanted to be a cop. I wanted to be a soccer player. I’d played left wing on the soccer team at Boston College. My junior year, we even made it to the Big East championship game.

Joe was one of those people in your life that you would always want in your foxhole, no matter how hard he pushed you or even yelled at you in public. He ran the respected Nassau County Street Crime Unit, and it wasn’t just that he’d known me since I could first kick a ball, or went to my First Communion, even my high school graduation. Or just because of my brother Michael, whose death made them all weep like babies. For them all.

It was that his best friend, my dad, Timothy Edward Stansi, was a first responder. He’d lost a son that day, and took a leave, and spent that last good year of his life picking through the ruins, never finding a sign of him. By 2003 he was dead from congestive lung disease.

That was why I was fast-tracked out of cadet school and put straight onto the Street Crime Unit. It was a way for Joe to keep a promised eye on me. He kept me under his wing. Though it didn’t take long for me to realize it wasn’t for me.

When Dad got sick, Joe became kind of a second father to me. Before the incident at the Haverston Projects, he was the first person I would have called, and if I told him I wasn’t guilty, no matter how it looked, I wouldn’t have had to say another word.

But soon after, things just fell apart. It was an angry time back then, after Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima in the city; everyone pointing fingers, shouting about racial profiling and trigger-happy cops. We ended up cleared by a department review, but he was forced to resign. He started drinking, and his wife, Grace, died from breast cancer. I went to law school for a year. Then I met Dave, at an advertising cocktail party. Our lives just moved in different directions. I suppose we both kind of reminded ourselves of a different past. Mine moved forward; Joe’s, well, his was never the same.

Truth was, I hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of years.

Still, he knew half the people of any importance on the forces in New York and on the Island, and the other half would probably say they knew him.

I pulled the car over on Route 100, not knowing where to go or who to call, my name out there in connection with three murders. I wished that my dad was around, but he wasn’t.

The only other person I could think of was Joe.

“Wendy!”

“Joe, thank God, I didn’t know who else I could call,” I said, the nerves clearly audible in my voice. “I wasn’t even sure this number was still good.”

“It’s all right. I’m glad you did. Wendy, before you say another word, you have to be careful about the phone.”

“I think it’s safe, Joe. I stopped at a market on the way. I bought a disposable one.”

“Good. That was smart. Wendy, we’ve all heard the news. No one can believe a word of what they’re saying. What the hell is going on?”

“Joe, listen, before I tell you anything, you need to believe me-what they’re saying isn’t true! I didn’t kill Dave, I swear. You know that. And I damn well didn’t kill that government agent the way it’s being said. It was entirely self-defense. He was shooting at me! I’m scared, Joe. I stumbled into something, and I’m being set up. I saw something… and now to keep it quiet they’re trying to kill me too.”

“Who’s trying to kill you, Wendy?”

As calmly as I could, which wasn’t easy under the circumstances, I told Joe everything that had happened to me over the past twenty-four hours. How I’d met Curtis at the Hotel Kitano bar and ended up in his room.

“First, I swear, Joe, nothing really went on… We kissed a little, that was all. I know how all this must sound-”

“Wendy, I don’t care about that stuff. But they’re saying you killed a government agent…”

“It’s true. But it was one hundred percent self-defense, Joe. I was actually in the bathroom, getting ready to leave…”

No matter how many times I went through it, I still couldn’t quite believe it had actually happened.

“Joe, he was trying to make it seem like the guy had pulled a gun on him.” I told how I’d identified myself as an ex-cop and how, instead of putting down his weapon, he made a move. “He was one hundred percent intending to kill me too. I’m sure of that. He might have been a government agent, but this was a murder, Joe. An execution. And I watched it happen.”

“Did you happen to see what agency the guy was from? No one’s saying.”

“You sitting down?” I told him how, before I left the room in panic, I pulled his ID. I sucked in a breath, knowing exactly how this was going to go over. “Homeland Security.”

There was a pause. I heard him blow out a breath. “Nice work, Wendy.”

“I know… Joe, all I could think of was that my life was about to fall apart if anyone found me there. When I ran out in the hall I ran straight into the guy’s partner. He took a shot at me and I panicked and ran. I went down the fire stairs. I don’t even know how I managed to get away.”

“You took the train home. Why didn’t you go straight to the police?”

“Because the police would have brought me right back there. I’d just seen someone murdered in front of my eyes! The killer’s partner had just tried to kill me too! I was scared to death. I didn’t know what I’d stumbled into. Not to mention, all I could think of was that my whole life was about to fall apart. If I hadn’t run, I’d be dead! I’d be dead,” I said. “But Dave… Dave would be alive…” A wave of guilt mixed with shame rose up in me. I started to sob again. I couldn’t hold it back.

“I know. I know, Wendy. I know exactly what you’re feeling. I know this is hard. But these are only questions someone else is going to put to you. And with a lot more at stake behind them. Why did you take the gun?”

“I didn’t take the gun,” I said, wiping away the tears.

“They’re saying Dave was shot with a weapon they’re matching up against the one in the hotel.”

“I’m telling you I didn’t take the gun, Joe. That’s all a frame-up. I left it back at the hotel.”

“So how did Dave get killed?”

I took him through how I’d made my way home, and how I realized I’d left my tote bag and that they had to know who I was. “I grabbed Dave and told him we had to get out of there. We were actually heading to the police, in the car about to leave, when all of a sudden these lights flashed on from behind us. It was them!”

I went through the rest. Not the police, but the agent who had shot at me at the hotel. “I knew we couldn’t just give ourselves up. That’s why they were there, at the house, instead of the cops-to finish the job. And I never took that gun from the room! I left it on the bed, I swear!”

“So Dave was with you? In the car? Not inside the house?” His tone contained an edge of incredulity.

“Yes, he was in the car, trying to leave with me. They started shooting and killed him as we drove away. The door was open and he fell out. I stopped and stared at his face, Joe. I knew he was dead. Then they started shooting at me. But if someone took that gun from the hotel room, it damn well wasn’t me.”

Joe grew silent, probably trying to absorb what I was telling him. I knew much of it sounded like a stretch. It was one thing to say I was unjustly accused, another thing entirely to fight back against a government cover-up trying to put the blame on someone else.

“I give you my word, Joe, they’re trying to frame me for Dave’s murder, just like they were trying to frame Curtis in that room. To make it look like he had drawn a gun first.”

“All right. I got it. Wendy, exactly what do you know about this guy Curtis?” he asked me.

“I don’t know a thing about him. He claimed he was a journalist. That he was in New York on a story. I took his cell phone. I thought I might need to find out something if I ever had to prove my innocence. I didn’t even know his last name. Though I do now…”

“Kitchner, right? I heard it on the news.”

“Yeah.” I heard him writing it down. “Joe, someone has to look through his computer…”

“Whose computer, Wendy?”

“Curtis’s. It was on the desk in the hotel room when I left. He said he was a journalist. There has to be something in there that would show why these people wanted him dead. That would back me up.”

“In the room, you say?” Now I was sure he was writing it down. “On the desk?”

“Yes. I know I should never have gone up there, Joe. I can’t undo that. But I didn’t intentionally kill anyone. And I damn well didn’t kill my husband. I loved him. You know that.” My throat was like a desert, and a clinging sweat had sprung up on my back. “You see any way out for me here?”

“The agent, the one you ran from at the hotel,” Joe said. “Dokes. You probably won’t want to hear this, but he’s been put in charge of the case.”

“I saw that,” I said glumly. The very person with the motive to keep me silent. Who has already tried to kill me. Twice. “My kids probably think I’m a murderer too. That I killed their own father. After completely betraying him. I can’t live with that, Joe. Either I find out what’s behind this, why these people needed to kill Curtis-they had to be into something dirty-or I turn myself in. But not to them. To someone else. To someone who will hear me out. I’ll go to the press and blow the whole thing open. Let the truth come out that way. I guess that’s why I’m calling you. I need someone to help me, Joe. I don’t have anyone else.”

If there was one person I knew wouldn’t put me on hold and contact the police on the other line, it was him. He knew more than anyone how your life could come crashing down in just an instant. Because of one ruinous decision. And what it was like to be thought of as a killer.

“Let me think about that awhile. I’ll be back with you.”

“I don’t really have a while, Joe. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

“Maybe I can help you with that. I have a summer cottage,” he said. “In Waccabuc. That’s in upper Westchester. It’s not much. But you’ll be out of sight there until we figure out what to do.”

My insides lit up in gratitude. “I don’t want to get you involved like that, Joe. It’s bad enough that you’re helping me now.”

“You must be kidding, honey. I haven’t felt this alive in years.”

“So how do I find it? Your cabin,” I said, putting the Explorer back in gear.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The press conference on the steps of the FBI Field Office in lower Manhattan was both electric and emotional.

A federal Homeland Security agent gunned down apprehending a suspect.

A doubting husband killed by his suspect wife-Wendy Stansi Gould. The only link between the two murder scenes, a woman who had clearly gone unhinged. And who was on the run.

The deputy director handled it. Alton Dokes was only a step away.

She couldn’t get far.

Dokes settled into his makeshift office as senior team leader of the investigation. They’d set up a joint task force with the FBI. They’d track her bank and credit cards. They had her cell phone number; they’d track all activity. Sooner than later she’d have to refill the car. She wasn’t a professional at this. They were tracking down her family and friends. There were only so many places she could go. She’d have to surface.

They’d get her.

If he didn’t get her first.

Her bad luck, Dokes knew, to even be in that room at that time. But Hruseff was a fool. He always threw caution to the wind. From way back. He should have waited for her to leave. However long it took. Like Dokes had pushed him. But no, Ray was always impetuous. Ever the cowboy. Even if he had handled her in there, it still would have made complications.

Now it had fallen into his lap.

The poor woman had no idea, no idea of the sort of damage she could create if her story about what happened got out. No idea of the network of contacts he had to find her. Not that anyone would ever believe her, Dokes told himself, chuckling. A hot little number who stepped out on her husband. Then killed him when he found out what she’d done. He’d set that up well. That story of how she got dumped from the police force was only the icing on the cake.

Dokes wasn’t even sure they had to silence her. She could shout it from the rooftops. Who would ever believe her now?

No, best to do what they came for. Best to end it as soon as the opportunity came about. He’d put too much into his career, they all had, to see it end now.

Too bad. Dokes rubbed the birthmark on the side of his face. He had watched her in the bar. Hot little number.

Too bad she’d never know what she’d stepped into.

Too bad she’d likely never make it into custody alive.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The sound of crunching gravel in Joe’s driveway sent a series of shock waves through me.

I ran to the window. If it was the police, I was resigned to give myself up.

But to my relief, I saw it was Joe’s old Pontiac coming down the driveway.

I’d driven here yesterday afternoon, found the key to the front door in a fake rock set under the front step, exactly where Joe described it. The place was cold; there was some canned soup in the kitchen cabinet I was delighted to heat up. And on the subject of heat, it must’ve been twenty degrees out there during the night. It took the better part of three hours for the cottage to churn up enough warmth to stop me from hugging myself in my parka until I finally fell asleep, searching for any news of me on the relic twelve-inch TV.

Joe stepped out of his car and came toward the landing. An older version of Joe than I was prepared for. He was in his sixties now-I hadn’t seen him in three or four years-and maybe not doing so well. His once salt-and-pepper hair had now become white, and the lines on his face that used to speak of toughness and experience had now hardened into the telltale canals of age, burrowed by life’s disappointments. He came up to the door and was about to knock. I thrust it open and let him in.

“Joe!”

He smiled back, warmly, happily. Mostly with his eyes. “Hey, doll.”

We looked each other over, his expression shining with a kind of close uncle’s affection; mine, no doubt, showing how taxing and overwhelming all of this had been.

“Let me give you a hug,” he said.

“I can use one,” I said, weightlessly falling into his still-strong arms.

“I’m so sorry about David,” he said into my ear as he squeezed me. Not that I recalled them actually meeting more than a couple of times, and by that time Joe and I had moved apart. But I knew it meant a lot to him, who’d vowed to Dad that he’d be my protector, for me to have landed safely into a new life after how we’d left the force.

“He was a good guy, Joe,” I said, unable to let go. “He didn’t deserve this.” For that moment, it felt as if nothing bad had happened, as if we’d been transported back in years. “I’m sorry too.” I felt tears running down my cheeks.

“I’m glad you found the place okay. Sorry about the heat. It’s real nice in the summer. The lake is just down the road. I know I didn’t leave you much in the way of food. I haven’t been up here since September-”

“Joe, it’s perfect, please.” I pulled away, wiping the tears from my eyes. “I can’t tell you how much this means to me. I had nowhere else to turn.”

“Well, I’m glad you came to me, Trey.” Trey was my nickname as a cadet on the Nassau force. Third-generation cop. “We’re gonna see what we can do. First,” he said, rubbing his palms together, “let’s crank up that burner. I don’t thaw out as well as I used to anymore. Any coffee?”

There was, and I made some. He took off his jacket and sat at the wood table in a plaid, wool shirt. I noticed his hands shaking as he lifted the mug, and it became clear it wasn’t from the cold. Our eyes met as he steadied it with his other hand. This time I was the one looking on with empathy.

“How long?” I asked him.

He shrugged, like a guilty child who’d been discovered. “Three years. Just after Grace passed away. It’s not as bad as it looks. I can still take care of myself.”

I knew that he had lost most of his medical benefits as a result of the incident. A subsequent civil suit and lawyer’s fees had taken much of the rest. Parkinson’s required treatment. And care. Lots of it.

“Robin and Steve are going to add something onto the house if it reaches that point,” he said with a resigned sigh. Robin was his daughter, a couple of years older than me. “Though, uh, we’re not exactly tooting our horns over the construction business about now, are we? Anyway, we’re not here about me. I thought the plan was to figure out how we’re gonna have you get out of this mess.”

I nodded and put my hand warmly on his shoulder. “Ten-four, Sarge.”

“This morning I went into town and grabbed a few minutes with an old buddy of mine. Jack Burns. Remember him?”

“No.” I shook my head.

“He was captain of detectives at One Police Plaza back in the day. He was at Mike’s funeral. Timmy’s too. Anyway, ten years later he’s got the gold stars on his sleeve now. Assistant chief. In charge of Borough Services.”

“What did you tell him?” I swung my chair around.

“I told him what you told me. All of it. Including how you say it happened at your house. With Dave. And how you never took the gun. I told him I could get you in. But we had to do it safely. Without it getting out.”

“I’m listening.”

“Wendy, what do you know about this guy? Curtis, you said his name was, right?”

“Yeah, Curtis.” I shrugged. “I told you. I don’t know anything, Joe.”

“What about why these particular people would be in his room?”

“The guy said something about Gillian. Before he shot him. I think that was it. I was scared. ‘This is for Gillian.’ I looked through Curtis’s cell phone. I couldn’t find anyone by that name. I’m hoping they’ll find something in his computer.”

“I mentioned that,” Joe said, his face sagging into a frown. “To the NYPD.” He leaned closer, forearms on his knees. “They didn’t find any computer, Wendy.”

“What? It was in the room, Joe. On the desk. It was a Mac. I saw it before I left.”

“I know you told me it was there. But according to the evidence sheets, in the reports, there was nothing.”

“There was something there, Joe!” Again, my stomach twisted into a knot. “The feds took it. Just like with the gun. Like how they’re trying to pin Dave’s murder on me. They’re whitewashing the whole thing. There’s something in there they don’t want anyone to find.”

“You said you had his phone?”

I nodded. I reached into my jacket pocket and put it out on the table.

Joe said, “Maybe they can find something in there. Jack remembered right away that you and I had a history together. He never liked how it all ended up with me. He knows we did good work in that Street Crime Unit.”

“You can trust him that it won’t go straight to the investigation?” To Dokes.

“Look, I can’t promise where any of this goes… only that he committed to take you in and hand you over safely to the FBI, and not the people who came after you. I told him you were scared and that the situation at your house didn’t go anywhere near how the government people are saying it did. But that’s a stretch, for someone like him to believe. You understand that? You have a lawyer?”

I shrugged. “Harvey Baum. He was Dave’s-”

“I don’t mean a divorce lawyer, Wendy. Someone who knows what the fuck he’s doing in a criminal court.”

“Then, no. I don’t.”

“This is the United States, Wendy. Whatever you stumbled into, they’re not going to just take you into a cell and you won’t come out. You’ll get to tell your story.”

“There’s my car. It was shot up pretty good. I left it in Vermont. That has to count for something.”

“The word coming down is that they arrived there just as you were fleeing the house, after killing Dave. And that they shot at you only as you tried to avoid capture.”

“That’s just not true…”

“Apparently their vehicle is pretty battered up, Wendy.”

I nodded sullenly. “That part is.” Everything fit their narrative. I sucked in a nervous breath. I knew that if I was taken into custody, I’d be arguing for my life. I knew it would be a hell of a lot more intense than this. “So when does this all happen?”

“Tomorrow. I told them I’d get back to them with a place. Somewhere public. Midtown. A hotel lobby, maybe. Bryant Park.”

“What about Grand Central?” I proposed.

“That could work.”

“At rush hour. It’s crowded. There are multiple entrances and exits if something goes wrong.”

“Nothing’s gonna go wrong, Wendy…”

“They killed my husband, Joe. They’ve completely twisted things around and tried to cover up what really happened. I watched them kill an innocent man right in front of my eyes. They’re the ones who have something to lose if this all comes out. They’re never gonna let me tell my story. We both know that, Joe. They can’t. I’m scared…”

I leaned over to him and he hugged me again. My heart beat nervously against him.

“I’m glad I told him,” I said into his flannel shirt.

“Who?” Joe asked.

“Dave. I’m glad he knew. Before he died. What I’d done. When those goddamn lights flashed on behind us. It’s hard for me to accept, that he died thinking that of me. What I’d done.” My eyes stung with biting tears.

“I promise.” He squeezed me again. “He wasn’t thinking that, Wendy. And nothing’s gonna go wrong. I’ll look the place over myself, when I get back into town.”

“You weren’t at my house, Joe. You weren’t in that room. How can you be so sure?”

He cupped my face and looked at me almost the way my father used to. I felt a wave of confidence run through me.

“ ’Cause I’ll be there.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

There are at least fifteen separate entrances to the main atrium of Grand Central Terminal.

I figure, at some point, I’ve probably gone in through them all.

There are the two main ones on Forty-Second Street, and the ones on Lexington and Vanderbilt Avenues. There’s the Fiftieth Street and Forty-Eighth and Forty-Sixth Streets, through the North Annex that lead directly onto the tracks. Down the main escalator from the MetLife Building. Through the alleys of Park Avenue East and West that border the Helmsley Building. There’s even the stairway from the Campbell Apartment, an old speakeasy situated off Vanderbilt Avenue that not many people know of and that Dave and I occasionally went to before heading home. I counted fifteen. There could be more.

But enough that the people who wanted to keep me quiet would never be able to cover them all.

I thought the best way for me to arrive was to come in directly on a train. With sixty-some-odd tracks on two different levels, at rush hour, there was no way they could watch them all. I left Jim and Cindy’s Explorer in a lot near the Rye train station and took the Metro-North into New York. I wanted to be sure I turned myself over to Joe’s contacts with the NYPD and not anyone else. No way the bastards who’d killed my husband would ever let me fall into the right hands.

The plan was to meet Joe at the information booth at the center of the Grand Concourse at 5:15 P.M. This was the height of the rush hour, when the crowds would be heaviest. I was told there would be three people from the NYPD waiting for me. Joe’s friend Burns, the assistant chief, who’d be wearing a blue New York Rangers cap, and two other senior detectives. No one could guarantee I wouldn’t ultimately be handed over to the feds-they had jurisdiction; it was their case. But the whole thing would be made public. The press would be fully aware. I’d be able to meet with a lawyer.

I had a story to tell-and I wasn’t about to tell it to anyone else.

My train from Rye rolled into the station at 5:04. I stepped onto the platform and blended in with the crowd. I had on the blue Patagonia pullover I’d taken from Vermont, a hooded microfiber shirt underneath. I wore sunglasses. I told Joe I’d meet him at the ticket counter just before 5:15. He said he’d scout the place out and make sure everything looked okay. The crowd pushed me forward, and the platform slowly fed into a narrow staircase leading to the upper level. I stepped in behind a black woman and her young son who’d gotten on in New Rochelle. My heart was starting to beat heavily. I got on my disposable phone and called Joe.

“I’m here,” I said when I heard him answer.

“I’m here too. Don’t be nervous. Everything seems to be a go.”

“ ‘Don’t be nervous.’ ” I chortled grimly. “Let me keep that in mind.” I pulled the hoodie up over my hair.

The kid in front of me stumbled on the stairs and I steadied him from behind. I gave him a smile and he shot a quick one back to me. “Reggie, watch yourself,” his mother said, tugging on his arm.

C’mon, Wendy, I begged my pounding heart. Keep it together.

I came out onto the Upper Concourse around Track 42, underneath the overhanging balcony.

The scene was just as I had hoped-a maze of commuters crisscrossing the vast Grand Concourse from all directions. Grand Central had always been one of my favorite spots, with the restored, majestic Beaux Arts ceiling, the food emporium down below, and the new Apple store on the east balcony. I just put my head down and told my heart to calm.

“Joe, I’m on my way,” I said into the phone. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

I crossed the main concourse as far from the information booth as I could, my face tucked into my jacket. I spotted the ticket counter. There were five or six windows open and lines at each of them.

I didn’t see Joe.

“Joe. I’m here,” I said, stepping into one of the ticket lines. Anything was getting me worried. “Where are you?”

“Right here,” he said.

I finally spotted him, hands in his pockets, the same corduroy jacket with the wool collar he had on the day before, waiting on one of the lines. I forced a brave smile and stepped in line next to him.

“How you holding up, kid?” he asked with a bolstering wink.

“I’m okay.” My nerves clearly apparent. “Barely.”

He squeezed my arm. “Everything’s gonna go down fine.” He glanced at his watch. The huge overhead clock in the station read 5:11. “I have their word.”

“Okay…” I blew out a tight breath. I wondered if lookouts were scanning the bustling crowd for me right now.

“Wendy, you know they’ll have to turn you over to the feds. But there’ll be a joint news conference and I’ve put my own attorney on notice. You’re free to change, of course, at any time…”

I nodded, a knot of worry forming in my gut. “I appreciate this, Joe. I can’t tell you how much…”

“Ready?”

“No. But if we don’t do it now, I don’t think I ever will…”

I was about to turn when he stopped me by the arm. “Wendy, whatever happens, I want you to know that it’s been one of the deep regrets of my life to have let you down back then. To have let your father down. The only thing that made it bearable to me was that I saw how you went on and got your life together, and met Dave… I want to see nothing more than for you to get back with your kids as best you can…”

“Thank you, Joe.” My eyes grew moist and started to sting. “That’s all I want too.”

“So let’s get on with it.”

Slowly, we wove our way across the concourse toward the information booth. My legs felt rubbery, and Joe held me by the arm to keep me steady. The place was mobbed, which was okay. It seemed like most of the world was rushing to make a train or just coming off one.

“Just stay to my side,” he said.

The bronze-gilded information booth came into view. The three men standing around it. One was in a blue cap. Burns. That had to be him. One of the others was shorter, bearded, wearing a flat-brimmed hat and black leather jacket. The last one looked Hispanic; it was hard to make out. Someone bumped into me from behind, practically scaring the wits out of me, I was so jumpy. “Sorry,” he muttered as he passed by.

“Joe, I’m scared,” I said. And not just by the threat that the government people might be here. Because of what I was doing. Everything falling apart. My life. My husband dead. My kids doubting me. Whether I’d be spending the rest of my life in jail…

“I know. I know, Wendy. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

I scanned the station. It all appeared like normal, rush-hour activity. But inwardly, I figured that anyone we passed by might well be undercover NYPD or the feds. The young woman with the backpack going over the train schedule. The Hispanic guy on the cell phone turning his back to me.

“There they are,” Joe said, eyeing the counter. “We’re almost there. All right, stay behind me.”

He took my arm as he was looking about, putting his body in front of mine. Through the crowd, I saw the three NYPDs. All that went through my mind was Dave. The people who had killed him were going to portray me as a killer. Someone completely unstable. A promiscuous thrill seeker who was cheating on her husband. They had framed me for Dave’s death just as they were trying to frame Curtis at the hotel. I imagined the headlines. I just prayed people would believe me.

As we got closer, my gaze fell on the tall man in the Rangers cap. He had a trusting, ruddy face. He gave me kind of a ready, officious smile, for a moment kind of putting me at ease.

The last ease I was about to feel for a long while.

Because a second later Joe looked up at the balcony and grabbed my arm to stop me in my tracks. Then I heard him groan above the din, “Oh, shit.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Alton Dokes scanned the floor of Grand Central Terminal from his perch on the great staircase next to Michael Jordan’s Steak House.

It seemed like every fucking person in New York was rushing by, making it virtually impossible to fix on anyone in particular, even through his high-intensity field binoculars.

He quickly located the three NYPD personnel hovering near the information booth in the center. Dokes chortled. They were severely misled if they thought for a second this was going to be an NYPD operation. That would bring in press and a lawyer. They had already opened the door to way too much as it was. However the stupid bitch had managed to be up in that hotel room, she’d turned a routine operation into a raging shit storm. Hruseff was dead and they could only hide what he’d been doing there so long. And what was behind it.

Now it had fallen into his lap, Dokes reflected, and it wasn’t going to go any further.

He knew how to do his job. There’d be a fuss at first, maybe the press would dig in, but ultimately it would all calm down after they failed to find anything. There was only one place anyone would suspect. They had the photo image of a top Zeta operative who was already in New York ready to be sent out to the various press and investigative agencies to take the blame for this. He and Hruseff were old pros at this kind of thing, but Ray was gone.

Now it was up to him.

Dokes swept his glasses around the bustling concourse.

The trail ended here.

He had no idea which direction the two would be coming from, only that they’d be heading for the information booth. He glanced at the image on his cell phone. Not the woman. Esterhaus. He centered on a dozen faces all moving toward the booth. Nothing yet. It was possible they would use some misdirection. He checked his watch: 5:14 P.M. The NYPD people were looking around.

C’mon, show yourself, dollface. It’s time…

Then something caught his eye.

From the southwest quadrant of the concourse. A man in a plaid jacket. Dokes looked again at the photo on his phone. The man seemed to be guiding a woman in a blue parka. He couldn’t fully see her; her face was inside a hood. He couldn’t get confirmation-she had on sunglasses. But he was sure. It had to be her.

There’s our gal.

“Six o clock. Two people. Blue parka. Hood,” he whispered into the radio.

His man on the balcony confirmed, just as businesslike. “I’ve got them, sir.”

The two wove through the crowd, using it for cover. Dokes checked the cops again. So far it seemed they hadn’t spotted them yet.

Then there was an opening in the crowd, and he pressed the mike close to his lips and said calmly to the shooter, his eye peering through the scope of the sniper’s rifle, “At your call, Wendell.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Don’t move!” Joe grabbed me, forcing me to a stop.

My heart jumped out of my chest. “What’s wrong?”

His gaze was fixed, but not where I expected, in the direction of the information booth. He was looking upward, at the second-floor balcony, directly in front of us.

He shifted in front of me. “Just stay behind me.”

“Joe…” My heart seized with alarm. “What’s going on?”

“Wendy, I want you to slowly back away,” he said in a businesslike voice. His hand was on mine, his body directly in front of mine.

That’s when I followed his gaze and noticed the glint. Coming through an opening in the balustrade on the second floor. And a kind of shadow behind it. The glint again. It could be nothing. It could also be the light glancing off the lens of a sight.

A shooter.

My alarm ratcheted up to fear.

“I’m sorry, but I think we’re going to call this off,” Joe said, making sure he was directly in front of me. “Wendy, I want you to just back away with me. No sudden movements. Just stay directly behind…”

We veered away from the information booth, Joe’s arm around my shoulder, his body shielding me from the spot he’d been fo-cused on.

He said, “I want you to find a way out of the station. Without drawing any attention to yourself. Do you have one?” His head craned back and forth. To the balcony, the information booth, the police there starting to look at him with some befuddlement.

“Yes.” I nodded, shock waves shooting down my spine. I did have a Plan B. If things went wrong. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think we’re quite as alone as I hoped. So I want you to take that way out. I’ll be in touch. We’ll work something else out, when I know exactly who we can trust. Just stay in the crowd, okay? That’s vital…” I glanced back at the balcony as he eased me forward. “Whatever you do, just-”

I never heard the shot. Just a spitting sound as Joe lurched forward with a gasp. I turned and saw a hole in his coat and his face go white and blood coming from his shoulder.

I screamed. “Joe!” My eyes fixed on him in horror and disbelief.

“Get out of here, Wendy,” he said, his eyes reflecting something between concern and helplessness. He pushed into me to get me going, just as another thud zinged in, a groan seeming to come straight from his lungs, blood seeping through his fingers. “Go! Now!”

I couldn’t. My feet were paralyzed. What have they done to Joe?

Even though he was the only thing protecting me from being hit myself, he pushed me away. “Wendy, now!”

I took off.

The woman I’d noticed a moment ago studying the schedule moved toward me, but Joe staggered into her, grabbing her arm and taking her down with him as he fell to his knees. Another shot came in, hitting her.

I screamed and pushed my way into a throng, just as people began to realize what was happening and started to scream as well.

I began to run. I looked back once at Joe, helpless, blood pooling on his chest. The woman he was entangled with took out a gun and started to shout at me. “Stop that woman! Stop!”

I fled into the crowd, darting in and out before the NYPD people even got a sense of what was happening. I heard the panicked murmur spread like wildfire, “Someone’s shooting! Someone’s shooting!”

I knew I had to get out of here now.

I hunched my face deeper into my collar and hurried away from the center of the station, praying that the next thing I felt wouldn’t be a sniper’s bullet tearing into me.

I moved toward the Vanderbilt Avenue staircase, to run down to the lower floor, praying that by now the guy with the rifle either had to flee himself or had lost me in the throng.

Then I caught sight of someone else standing at the bottom of the staircase. Staring directly at me.

The black agent who had chased me at the hotel.

Dokes.

Everything in me turned to ice.

Frantic, I backed away from him, bumping into people passing by. For a second he stood as frozen as me, then he spoke into a radio. Our gazes locked on each other. I saw him reach into his jacket for a gun.

I took off across the Main Concourse.

I knew I was a sitting duck. The NYPD cops were everywhere, and a guy was peering through a sniper’s scope, all searching for a woman in a blue parka, sunglasses, and hood.

I sprinted into a large group of Asian tourists moving toward Lexington Avenue and pushed my way into the middle. I tore off my parka and threw it to the floor. I pulled off my sunglasses and shook out my hair, knowing anyone looking for me would be focused on the woman they’d all seen a moment before.

I turned and saw Dokes pushing his way through the bustling crowd, trying to follow me. Maybe twenty or thirty yards behind. My thoughts went to Joe. I didn’t know if he was alive or dead. I only knew what he would want me to do.

I ran.

I made it across the terminal to the east annex, where most of the shops and retail food outlets were.

But I was petrified to try to get to one of the main entrances. I was sure they would be covered.

Then it hit me. The subway entrance. It was just up the platform. A hundred yards from me.

That was my best way out.

I bolted out of the crowd and wedged myself between a businessman and a woman on her cell phone, and made it to the southeast underpass beneath the giant schedule board. I knew I was finally out of reach of the guy on the balcony. But I did spot the bearded NYPD detective I had seen at the information booth who was frantically sorting through the people passing by him. I wasn’t sure if I could trust him if I just turned myself in as planned. Someone had given me away! The only thing I had going for me was that he’d be looking for someone in a blue parka and sunglasses.

I put my hand over my face as if I was talking on my cell phone and went right by him, catching sight of him jumping up and down and as he craned for a better view. From here it was only about fifty yards up the ramp to the subway entrance. There, I was pretty sure I could get lost in the myriad tunnels and trains at the Forty-Second Street station.

But then I made a mistake.

Instead of remaining huddled in the crowd, I turned around to see if the NYPD guy was coming after me.

And I found myself staring at Dokes. He had stopped to get a better vantage point and was scanning the area where he thought I’d be. His gaze locked on me. He grabbed his radio and came after me. He was around twenty yards behind.

I darted out of the cover of the crowd.

Now he had a bead on me, and I realized that my life was only as good as my being able to get to the subway. I fled up the Forty-Second Street ramp, jammed with rushing commuters who knew nothing of what had happened back in the main station, knocking into them as I darted by, frantically glancing behind me to see how close Dokes was.

He was gaining.

He knocked down a pedestrian in his way, shouting, “Federal agent!” Closing the gap on me.

I sped down the subway steps, forcing myself past the slower pedestrians, fumbling through my purse for my transit card. I looked back up the stairs and saw Dokes darting through the crowd.

My heart constricted with fear.

In the station, I had several possibilities, but there was no time to think it through. There was a tunnel that led to the crosstown shuttle, and another to the F and Q trains to Queens and Brooklyn. My thought had been to get to the uptown Lexington line and make it to 125th Street, where I could catch the Metro-North train back to Rye, where I’d left my car.

I ran my card and pushed through an empty turnstile, just as Dokes made it down the stairs.

He looked around, unable to spot me at first. There was a maze of people rushing by. I ran along the upper platform, stopping behind a jewelry kiosk. I looked back and saw him scanning in all directions, not knowing where I was. He threw up his hands in exasperation.

I couldn’t wait. I was just so nervous hiding there. It was as if my breaths and the pounding of my chest were giving me away. I heard the rumble of a train coming into the station below me. I ran to one of the staircases to head down to the platform. As soon as I was in the open, Dokes caught sight of me. I ran down the stairs and saw him leap the turnstile and head after me.

Oh, Wendy, no…

I knew I had nowhere to go but onto a train, or else I’d be trapped on the platform. I figured he knew it as well. As I got to the platform, two trains arrived in the station simultaneously, an express and a local. There were dozens of people blocking my path, but I elbowed through them and hurried two or three cars down from where Dokes would be coming.

The trains hissed to a stop. The doors opened on both sides. Streams of passengers poured off. I was certain Dokes was on the platform heading toward me. I had to choose. I bolted onto the express train and pushed my way through the crowd, begging the doors to close, not knowing if Dokes had already jumped on. I stood away from his probable line of sight. If he did make it on, he could simply push his way through, car by car. Eventually, he’d find me. I didn’t know if I should stay on or get off. Run to the local or go back up the stairs to the upper platform. Or if he had other people following him. I heard the conductor’s announcement: “Fifty-Ninth Street, next stop.”

Close, damn it, close. I looked at the local across the platform. I had no idea which train Dokes might be on. Just close.

Finally I heard the warning buzzer. I had no idea where Dokes was. Then I saw him running back on the now empty platform, scanning through the windows of both trains. The buzzer sounded again. I peered through an opening in the bodies surrounding me and, to my relief, saw him jump onto the local train, just as the doors began to close.

My heart almost imploded in relief as we began to pull away.

Somehow having second thoughts, Dokes leaped off his train and crossed the platform. He peered through the window and slammed on the door of our departing train. He took out his badge and tried desperately to flash it at a conductor as the train began to move, picking up speed.

Then he slammed the side of the train in anger and frustration.

We zoomed by.

I knew he couldn’t radio to anyone ahead at the next stop, or get the NYPD involved. The police were the last people he wanted to find me.

I was safe. At least for the moment.

I dropped my head against a pole, my breaths heavy and fast. My mind flashed to Joe. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. I only knew I could no longer turn myself in. Not now.

The only way out now was to prove my innocence.

I reached into my pocket and came out with Curtis’s phone.