Now You See Her

Chapter 101

A VIOLET-TINGED SHADOW rose up the cabin wall of the small American Eagle jet like a tide as we made the final descent for Key West the next afternoon. Beside me, Charlie started to snore as the landing gear hummed down beneath our feet.

Now that Justin had been given a stay, I wanted nothing more than to be landing in New York. But after we visited a groggy Justin in the infirmary that morning, Charlie had called his law school buddy FBI Special Agent Robert Holden and told him about Peter.

Holden was already waiting for me at Charlie’s house to formally interview me and open Peter’s case. Getting back to my life, unfortunately, would have to wait.

I unburdened my troubled soul in Charlie’s office for a second time.

Agent Holden, a tall, black, former college basketball player, sat across from me taking extensive notes on a yellow legal tablet as I told him about Peter’s first wife, Elena’s shooting, my faked death.

When I was done, Holden looked at me, poker-faced, expressionless. Whether he thought I was crazy or heroic or a liar, there was no way to tell. He capped his red Mont Blanc pen and tucked it into the inside pocket of his charcoal suit coat.

“Would you be willing to repeat what you just told me in open court?”

I thought about that. What would happen when my bizarre story of faking my death and changing my identity came out? It would probably mean my job, some of my friends. I decided that losing it all was worth getting my life back, becoming whole again.

“Yes, of course,” I said. “So what do you think? Is there a case against Peter after all these years?”

“We’ll have to see,” Holden said. “There’s no statute of limitations for murder. The most interesting angle from where I’m sitting is Peter’s corruption as the chief of police. We can start by going after him for Hobbs Act public official violations and see where that leads us. I’m definitely satisfied enough to open an investigation on him forthwith. Because of the threat to you, after I leave here, I’m going to recommend to my boss that he send a team down and that we place Fournier under immediate surveillance. When will you be heading back to New York?”

“Tomorrow,” Charlie said, coming into the office, clinking a couple of Coronas together. “We still have some serious celebrating to do.”

“Well, take it easy and keep an eye on her until she gets on that plane, Charlie,” Holden said. “I’ll keep you guys updated.”

As the FBI agent stood, I wondered yet again if I should bring up that one pesky little detail concerning Ramón Peña. Try to get ahead of it before it undoubtedly came out.

Yet I kept my mouth shut as Holden went out the front door.

“To you,” Charlie said, handing me a beer. “I’m proud of you. You’ve been holding that in for seventeen years. That took guts.”

Guts, lack of scruples. Whatev, as Emma liked to say.

I threw the lime wedge garnish into the office wastepaper basket and took a long hit off the beer. It was crisp, delicious, as cold as an ice cream headache, and after another hit it was empty.

“My plane leaves in twelve hours,” I said, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “We don’t have time to fruit the beer, Baylor.”

Chapter 102

IT WAS SIX O’CLOCK when we arrived in Mallory Square for the sunset celebration. The kooky Key West sunset party hadn’t changed a bit. It was the same uplifting reggae music I remembered, the same happy dancing fools splashing beer all over themselves and one another, the same seductive champagne-colored light.

The original plan had been just to chill back at Charlie’s house, but about an hour before, Agent Holden had called. He’d said that they’d put Peter under surveillance and that they had tailed him up to a boat show in Key Largo, where he’d checked into a hotel with his wife and two kids. Which meant that Key West was ours at least for the night.

Charlie held my hand as he guided me through the street performers and sunburned drunken tourists. He said he had a surprise lined up. I let him walk me out of the square and down a few narrow blocks. We finally arrived at the water at Schooner’s Pier, a restaurant and private marina.

I closed my eyes and sighed as a sea breeze lifted my hair.

I actually deserved to celebrate a little. I had helped get Justin a stay of execution. I’d even made some progress in cleaning up my own life in the past week. There was still the ghost of spring break past haunting me, but what were you going to do? Despite the still unresolved issue that was my life, I officially decided to give my guilt a well-deserved night off.

“Is this where it happens? Your big surprise?” I said to Charlie.

“You’ll see,” Charlie said, taking my hand again.

Instead of taking me into the restaurant as I expected, Charlie walked me down the wooden dock. We stopped in front of a massive two-decked luxury motor yacht.

“After you,” he said with a courtly wave toward its boarding ramp.

“What… what are we doing?” I said, gaping at the white Ferrari-sleek lines of the majestic ship. The black-tinted windows on the captain’s bridge made it look like it was wearing shades.

“It belongs to a client of mine, Bill Spence. He owes me a favor,” Charlie said as he tugged me up the ramp. “He runs an upscale sunset dinner cruise. Even at a hundred and eighty a pop, it’s usually pretty crowded, but I got us the whole shebang. She’s all ours. At least for the next three hours.”

“What?” I said, ecstatic.

“Wait here,” Charlie called as he stepped through a doorway off the first deck.

He came back two minutes later, smiling, as he grabbed my hand and pulled me forward. We passed a Jacuzzi and a tiki bar before arriving at the railing of the bow, where an intimate table for two sat waiting.

Charlie handed me a champagne flute and pulled a bottle out of a silver ice bucket.

“Our host is putting the finishing touches on our dinner,” he told me as he filled my glass with bubbly. “He said to enjoy a toast as he takes us out. The first course is coming up.”

“First course?” I said in surprise.

“Now, now. Enough chitchat. This is a surprise,” Charlie said, winking.

Chapter 103

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the Mallory Square crowd roared at us like we were celebrities, as the luxury yacht swooshed us past them toward the setting sun.

The captain let off the ship’s air horn. When we turned, we could just make out his large silhouette waving to us from behind the bridge’s tinted glass windshield. Charlie hugged me as we waved back with raised champagne flutes.

“Take it off, hottie! Work it!” a handsome black guy standing on the shore railing yelled between cupped hands.

“Come on, Nina. Accommodate the man,” Charlie said.

“Um, I don’t think he was talking to me, hottie,” I said, bursting into giggles.

Charlie laughed, too, as he took a handful of cards out of his jacket pocket. They were the business cards he’d received from media people during his press conference outside the prison after Justin’s stay. He finished his champagne and started thumbing numbers into his cell phone.

“Whoo-hoo! Look at me, momma. What do we have here? Producer for Larry King. A Vanity Fair guy. Heck, I’ve got Geraldo on speed dial now,” he said. “Screw HGTV. Maybe I’ll score one of those mock trial shows. How does Judge Charlie strike you? Hello, fifteen minutes. What took you so long?”

I smiled as the bow cut through the Tiffany blue waves. The wind was absolutely wrecking my hair, but I didn’t give a hoot. We were heading directly at the reddening sun now. I was almost back in the human race.

I finished my champagne and poured another. I tipped the glass to my lips.

To me, I thought.

I was lowering my flute when I suddenly felt dizzy. I blinked, rubbed my eyes. No! Don’t tell me I was getting seasick.

“Probably should take it easy until the first course, huh?” I said.

Then I felt really dizzy, extremely light-headed. I blinked as my vision blurred.

“Charlie?” I said, putting out my hand toward the ship’s rail to steady myself.

I turned as there was a loud thud.

Charlie had fallen out of his chair. He was facedown on the varnished teak deck, his cell phone by his hand, his business cards fluttering like leaves.

When I leaned forward out of my chair to see what was wrong, I lost my balance and pitched out of my seat onto the deck as well. I tried to get up on my knees, but I was suddenly weak, unsteady. I lay back down on my stomach, struggling to catch my breath.

I craned my neck around and looked up at the bridge’s tinted window. The captain was gone. Before I could figure out any of this, the door to the bridge opened a moment later. There was a jingle and a click-click-click sound, and then a cute little dog appeared on the deck. It was a Jack Russell.

Chapter 104

I WASN’T SURE if it was ten minutes or ten hours later when my eyes snapped open in the dark.

I was on my back. I lay there, blinking and breathing rapidly, as my weak, disoriented mind struggled to remain conscious.

My face felt like someone had used it as a hammer. My stomach was one large, acidic sour knot. The taste in my dry mouth was vaguely medicinal. My entire body felt strange and puffy, as if I were wrapped in a cotton ball cocoon.

Accident? was my first coherent thought.

Then the belowdeck cabin I was in tilted and creaked, and my eyes went wide as I remembered everything. An aha moment straight from hell.

I remembered Charlie, facedown on the deck beside me. The champagne had been doctored, I realized.

“No,” I said weakly. I tried to move my right arm. I turned my wrist maybe a centimeter before it rolled back like a too heavy log. I was still drugged. Was it anesthesia?

I was trying to move my other arm when I heard something in the distance: a hollow thump followed by a tremendous splash.

I closed my eyes as panic bloomed in the pit of my stomach. It began to rise into my throat like the numbers on a thermometer in a blast oven when I heard the close sound of heavy footsteps above.

Think! I urged myself. I tried to. But there was nothing except the dark. Nothing but the accelerating beat of my heart. Finally, a wave of temptingly sweet exhaustion passed through me like a last hope.

Of course, I thought. I needed to go back to sleep. Figure it out later, much later.

I heard the opening of a door, someone coming down the stairs.

Stop it! Wake up! some other part of me thought. Stand up! I frantically began to beg myself.

The other lazy part was having none of it. I free-fell back toward the safe oblivion of sleep with a sigh, as if that would save me.

A moment later, my eyes bolted open as the reek of ammonia scoured my nostrils like a serrated knife.

“Haven’t I seen you someplace before?” the Jump Killer said as he lifted me into his arms.

Chapter 105

THE JUMP KILLER carried me into a bright room that looked like a library. There were dark, varnished, oak-paneled walls; leather-bound books on shelves; an expensive wooden globe; a cigar humidor; a fully stocked bar. Above the bar, a signed collector’s baseball bat was lit like a painting in a gallery.

But instead of furniture, in the room’s exact center was a massive four-poster bed. The incongruity of it reminded me of the gurney they’d strapped Justin Harris to in the death chamber. That wasn’t the only similarity, I realized. From all four posts dangled dark metal circles. Handcuffs, I realized, as I was dropped onto the bed.

“Welcome to the Jungle Room,” the Jump Killer said. “This is where all the magic happens.”

I noticed what I was wearing for the first time as my wrists and then my ankles were cuffed. I stared down at myself and began to weep.

I was in some kind of see-through bra and underwear, a garter belt, stockings. My arms and legs had been moisturized with a sickeningly sweet cherry-scented lotion. I realized then that I was wearing makeup. Gobs of it were greased onto my cheeks, smeared on my lips, caking my eyes.

“Please,” I said through my slimy lips. “Please don’t… don’t kill me.”

“That’s funny. That’s exactly what Tara Foster said all those years ago. Right before I strangled her to death with her bra,” the Jump Killer said, folding his meaty arms. “Maybe if you’d been smart and let Harris take the fall for it, you wouldn’t be in this pickle.”

That’s when I noticed there was another door in the room’s corner. From behind it suddenly came Mexican pop music, loud, frenzied racing horns. There was the clop of stamping feet, excited voices, drunken laughter. The Mexican music was cut short to howls and then a rap song started up and there was more stomping and howling.

“What is this? Who are they?” I said.

“They’re drug dealers,” the Jump Killer said. “Top Mexican cartel guys. Real big shots. I get their women for them. Don’t worry. You’re going to get to know them all very soon, very intimately.”

My mind whited out for a moment. Sizzling fuzz filled my head like a lost TV signal.

“I’m not a prostitute!” I cried.

“They don’t want a prostitute, silly,” he said. “This is a special celebration. These boys just closed a huge deal for very, very big money. They risked their lives, their freedom, and came out on top. They’re ready to party till you drop. In your case, party till they get sick of raping you and drop you dead in the water.”

There it was. The most horrible thing of all. It explained why there were so many disappearances, why some of the missing women’s bodies were never found.

“You wouldn’t believe the amount of money these guys spend. Not that I don’t deserve every penny, with all the cleanup. Sometimes I think some of these fellas must be half Mayan or Aztec because after they’re done, you’d think it was a human sacrifice in here with all the blood. I have to wash the goddang sangre off of the ceiling.” The Jump Killer smiled.

“I’m getting your attention now. I can see it in your face. You’re a little long in the tooth for them, but I’m offering you as a special, a half-price appetizer. Those are my orders, and I’m not going to screw them up this time. After all, they came straight from the big man himself.”

Orders?

“What are you talking about?” I mumbled. “From who?”

The Jump Killer started laughing then. “You still don’t know what the hell is going on, do you? Even now. Of course not. Precious little Jeanine always kept in the dark.”

What!?

“My orders come from Peter, Jeanine. Remember him? Your husband? My best friend. There is no Jump Killer. There never was one. There’s just Peter. Peter and me.”

Chapter 106

THE HILARITY NEXT DOOR hit a fever pitch as the old-school rap classic “Wild Thing” by Tone-Loc started up. The volume suddenly blasted twice as loud as I lay there staring up at the coffered ceiling.

“You know Peter used to talk about you all the time,” the Jump Killer said, sitting in the chair by the side of the bed and checking his watch. “The silly things you guys used to do together. He really thought you were a good kid. I wanted to meet you, but of course Peter said no way. I think he might have really even loved you. That’s why I was so surprised when he asked me to kill you.”

I looked at his face. He was still smiling.

“You never figured this out?” he said, shaking his head. “Peter hired me to kill you, Jeanine, while he was off on his fishing trip. Make you disappear. Sell you to our drug-running friends like all the others. I was going to do it, too, when I saw you leave the house.

“I followed you around all goddamn day, watched you cut yourself on the beach, watched you dye your hair. I didn’t know what the hell you were doing until you hit the Overseas Highway and I realized you were exiting stage left. That’s when I pulled up and gave you a lift. But then you pulled that trick with the Mercedes and you got away. At first, I didn’t know what to do. But it looked like you weren’t coming back anyway, so I just lied and said I killed you.”

The cotton ball effect of the drug began to wear off and was replaced by a dull head-to-toe ache. I moved my right arm. It went a foot before the handcuff got painfully taut against my wrists. I stared at the bed’s heavy wooden posts inside the steel cuffs. They were scratched and worn from use, as if chewed. I gagged as I realized it was from women rattling them as they struggled.

When I looked back, the Jump Killer was picking at something in his perfectly capped teeth with his pinkie.

“I should have told Peter the truth, but frankly I was afraid to,” he said. “You think I’m bad? Peter’s like the Tony Soprano of Key West, except without the sense of humor.” The Jump Killer shrugged. “But he never showed you that side, did he? With me, it was always death threats and slapping me around for forgetting something, but not you. With you, it was always flowers and rainbows and love notes.”

He stood and yawned.

“See, Jeanine, women, even wives, come and go, but friends are forever. Best friends, anyway. We were in the Rangers together. When he needed someone to watch his back, I was the one he called. I’ll admit that he really wasn’t too happy with me when he saw you in New York. But he finally relented and gave me a second chance to take you out. I almost had you at your hotel room, too.”

The Jump Killer walked to the door and opened it.

“Don’t worry, though. I’m not going to blow it this time. When these boys are finished with you, before your burial at sea, I’m going to put two bullets in the back of your head to make sure you stay dead. Once and for all.”

Chapter 107

THE DOOR CLOSED. A quotation popped into my head as the electric guitar riffed between hip-hop bass thumps next door.

The hard way is the only way.

Whether it was from a writer or the Bible, I couldn’t quite recall. All I remembered was that I never understood it. Why would someone choose for things to be hard?

But as I lay there, my face drenched with tears, an ironlike fear clenching every sinew of my body, I finally knew what it meant.

It meant there were no shortcuts. You had to pay for things. Sometimes, it was your job to go down no matter how unfair things were. Meeting Peter had allowed me to avoid my fate for killing Ramón Peña, at least up until now. Today I was going to pay for that crime with interest.

I remembered how shocked I’d been when I’d seen how resigned to die Justin Harris had been. I wasn’t shocked anymore.

Someone knocked on the door.

But instead of stiffening with a soldierly stoicism like Justin, I went into a full-body twinge of revulsion and horror. My tendons felt like they were about to pop.

“Hola!” said a jolly whisper as the door opened.

The man who stepped in looked more French than Mexican. He was swarthy and tall and lean with long, lustrous shoulder-length black hair. A cigar jutted from his stubbled jaw. In his tailored pinstripe suit coat, an open-throated banker’s shirt, and nice jeans, he looked European, a sophisticate, a rich ne’er-do-well dandy ready for a night on the town.

When he took off his suit coat, I saw that he wore a pearl-handled automatic in a shoulder rig. He smiled at me from around his cigar as he selected a bottle and glass from the bar and poured himself a tall drink of whiskey. He pointed to the drink and then at me in a gallant gesture, wondering if I wanted one.

The handcuffs started click-clacking off the wood as I started to shake.

He shrugged his shoulders in an oh-well gesture. Then he puffed elaborately on his cigar, blew smoke up at the coffered ceiling, and approached the bed.

He was sitting at the foot, pulling off one of his cowboy boots, when there was a noise over the loud music.

It was the wail of an air horn above deck.

Next door, the volume quit as men shushed one another, listening.

“This is the United States Coast Guard!” came the order from a bullhorn. “No one move!”

Two gunshots blasted one right after the other above us. There was a surprised yell in Spanish followed quickly by a splash.

“Don’t move! We will shoot! Don’t move!” the bullhorn speaker said.

There was some more gunfire, and the long-haired man at the end of the bed looked up in shock as running footsteps passed directly overhead.

One boot on, one boot off, his cigar in his mouth and his automatic out, he clopped to the door. He opened it. Then I screamed as he pulled the trigger.

There were more shots and yelling as someone returned fire. A hunk of paneled wood blew out of the wall beside the drug dealer’s head. Then the gun suddenly fell from his hand. The expression on the man’s face was one of curiosity as he looked down at his blood-soaked banker’s shirt. Then there was another violent, earsplitting bang and then another and he fell, sparks from his cigar flying up as he crashed forward onto his face.

I was crying as young men dressed in blue and carrying rifles rushed into the room. After another moment, Charlie, soaking wet, was smiling down at me. He wasn’t dead somehow.

I tried to say something, but found that I couldn’t. It seemed like I was in shock.

Charlie tried to pull me off the bed until he saw the handcuffs. Then he took the baseball bat off the wall and began breaking the bedposts one by one.

Chapter 108

“OK, ONE MORE TIME from the top,” Scott Dippel, the commanding officer of the coast guard ship, said, clicking his pen in one of the now docked cutter’s staterooms.

I was wearing some borrowed USCG sweats and my hair was still wet from, by far, the best shower I’d ever taken in my life. Charlie sat next to me. He was holding a bag of frozen green beans against the lump on his head that he received when he planted his face on the deck.

“Yes, please. From the tippy top, considering we have two men dead and three Mexican nationals in custody,” added FBI Agent Holden. He’d come aboard immediately when we returned to the coast guard’s base.

The Jump Killer, or whoever he was, had been shot dead. Trying to escape in the drug dealers’ boat, he had fired on the coast guard ship. The coast guard guys returned the favor with their fifty-caliber machine gun.

As I was taken aboard, I actually saw his blown-apart body, floating facedown in the water, under the ship’s floodlight. I didn’t need any grief counseling. If anything, my only regret was that I hadn’t been able to do it myself.

“Slowly now,” Dippel said. “Who was the big guy we shot?”

“Captain Bill Spence,” Charlie said. “He’s a client of mine, or he was. He drugged us and threw me overboard. I woke up in the water on my back with two gallons of salt water in my stomach. I saw the yacht’s running lights and dog-paddled toward them for what seemed like three hours. The go-fast speedboat pulled alongside when I was about a couple of hundred feet away. When the Mexican guys boarded the yacht, it took everything I had to drag myself onto their boat, and I used its radio to call you.”

The tall red-haired sailor clicked his pen again. “And the Hispanic men are?”

“Mexican drug dealers,” I said. “Spence abducted women and brought them out to sea and sold them to drug runners who raped and killed them at their sick parties. Which was exactly what would have happened to me if Charlie hadn’t called you.”

“How do you know all this?” Agent Holden wanted to know.

“Spence told me!” I yelled. “Don’t you understand? I wasn’t kidding when I said I knew that Justin Harris didn’t kill Tara Foster. Spence was the Jump Killer. He was the man who tried to abduct me all those years ago. He’s been abducting and selling women since Miami Vice was popular. Not only that, he said the chief of police was involved. Peter Fournier was his partner. In fact, he said Peter ran the drug trade in Key West.”

“That one I can’t understand,” Dippel said. “Peter Fournier? I know him. I’ve eaten at his house. Our kids are on the same baseball team. That can’t be right.”

“You think you feel stupid? I married the man,” I said. “Spence also said Peter had hired him to kill me before I got away.”

“It all actually makes sense now,” Charlie said, shifting the frozen beans to his other hand. “The captain became my client and good buddy right around the time it came out in the local paper that I was representing Justin. He would ask about the case all the time. And I thought he was just a crime buff or something. He was the one who actually offered the free cruise for us to celebrate!”

Holden frowned. “What a goddamn mess,” he said. “This is what you call taking it easy, Baylor?”

Agent Holden left the room to make some calls. An hour later, at around four a.m., he came back in and told us we could leave.

“Your story seems to pan out so far. I checked the registration on the yacht. Peter is actually listed as one of the owners. I also just got off the phone with my agent in charge. We’re putting round-the-clock surveillance on Fournier. Until we grab him, I want you out of here, Miss Bloom, or Fournier, or whatever the hell your name is. I want you to get checked out at the hospital and then get on the first flight out of here this morning, and don’t think this is all over. We’ll be keeping an eye on you. And you, Charlie. You can bet your ass I’ll be in touch.”

Chapter 109

WE SKIPPED THE HOSPITAL and went straight to the airport, stopping only to swing by Charlie’s house so I could get changed and grab my bags.

The sun was rising behind the smudged Plexiglas window of the airport waiting area when Agent Holden called Charlie on his cell an hour later. Charlie excused himself to take the call.

“Holden just got to Spence’s house with the state CSI team,” Charlie said, clicking his phone shut as he came back inside. “Hopefully, they’ll find evidence that’ll link that psycho son of a bitch to Tara Foster’s murder as well as to the disappearances of all those other women. He said the place looks like a landfill, so it’ll probably take awhile.”

Charlie shook his bruised purple head. “What a night, huh? Do I know how to party or what?” he said as they called my plane.

“Charlie, listen. I need to tell you something,” I said. “I left something out.”

“No,” Charlie said. “Please. Not more.”

“It’s going to come out, and I want you to hear it from me first. It’s about how I met Peter.” I took a breath. I felt a weight shift inside me, the weight of so many years of holding it all in.

“Seventeen years ago, when I was on spring break, I’d been drinking and got behind the wheel, and I accidentally killed a man. Peter was the first cop on scene. He helped me. He got rid of the body.”

“What?” Charlie said.

“Yes, Charlie. That’s how we met. That’s probably why I married him. He protected me from going to jail. I’m just like him, Charlie. Corrupt. You need to stay the hell away from me. Everyone does. My whole life is just one big lie. I guess it always has been.”

Charlie stared at me. He winced, looking away. I could see tears in his eyes, pure hurt. It killed me to see him like that. He opened his mouth to say something, then he closed it again.

“Charlie,” I said, starting to cry myself.

“I’m leaving,” he said a moment later.

And that’s just what he did, without another look back.

Chapter 110

I SOMETIMES have trouble sleeping on planes, but not this time. I slept all the way to Atlanta, and after I switched planes I put my head back and went out like a light switch again. I didn’t wake up until we were touching down in New York.

I was in my apartment an hour later, showered and in my own bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, when my wall phone rang.

Please let it be Charlie, I prayed, answering it.

“I just heard!” my boss, Tom Sidirov, yelled triumphantly. “You pulled it off! You actually saved a guy on death row. Home run! Grand slam! Come in right now. We’ll go to lunch. I need to hear all about it.”

“I’d love to, Tom,” I said. “But I just got off the plane. How about tomorrow? I’m zonked.”

“Of course, of course. Rest up for the TV cameras. I already called the PR guys. The firm’s going to milk this thing for all it’s worth. I’m so proud of you. I’ve been gloating to all the other partners all morning. We’ll do a victory lap tomorrow. I knew you could do this, kid.”

After I hung up, I wondered how jazzed Tom was going to be when he found out that I’d been lying to the firm, that I’d killed a man in a drunk-driving accident and covered it up, and that my name wasn’t Nina Bloom.

Oh, well. I’d find out soon enough.

Then I heard the lobby buzzer in the kitchen.

“Who is it?” I said, pressing the Talk button.

“It’s me, Mom,” said Emma.

“Emma!” I yelled. Well, at least I had someone who’d stand by me.

“Baby, I missed you so much!” I said.

“Mom, c’mon,” Emma said. “Buzz me in already.”

I pressed the Door Open button and unlocked my apartment’s front door before I went back into the bedroom. I was unzipping my suitcase when I noticed the message indicator on my cell. Someone had called while I was in the shower.

“Listen, Nina,” Charlie said, sounding out of breath.

Thank God. Charlie did want to speak to me again.

I heard the front door open.

“Hey, Em!” I called behind me. “Hold on. I’m in the bedroom. I’ll be right there.”

“The FBI tracked Fournier to a hotel room up in Key Largo. When they went to arrest him half an hour ago, they found something horrifying. His wife and two young sons were dead, shot execution-style in the back of the head. Fournier wasn’t there. No one has seen him. They think he’s been gone for at least twenty-four hours. The FBI is putting out an APB on him right now. Whatever you do, don’t go back to your apartment. Call me pronto. I need to know that you’re OK.”

That’s when I heard Emma outside my bedroom door.

“Mom?”

“Em, listen, pack a bag now. I’ll explain to you in a second. I have to—” I started, dialing frantically.

“No, Mom. Whatever it is, it can wait,” Emma said, a strange, angry edge in her voice. “There’s someone I think you should meet.”

“What?” I said.

I turned around. The iPhone spilled out of my trembling fingers and bounced off my glass-and-metal bedside table with a loud crack before somersaulting onto the Oriental carpet and landing facedown.

I shook my head slowly, my unmoving eyes wide, bugging as if they were being pushed out from their sockets.

Emma was in the doorway staring at me.

There was a man behind her wearing a Boston Red Sox baseball cap, an Adidas warm-up jacket, camo pants, and shiny black combat boots.

“Mermaid!” Peter said with a tip of his cap as he stepped into the room.

Chapter 111

“HOW COULD YOU?” Emma cried at me. Her voice was angry, hurt. Her face was damp from crying. She was upset. At me?

“You’ve been lying to me my entire life. How could you be so selfish?” she yelled. She took out a picture of twin boys. “These are my stepbrothers. I do have a family. You’re sick, Mom. You’re a sick person.”

“Emma, please,” I said, my mouth going dry.

“Stop it! Stop lying!” she screamed. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that I had a father? That he was alive. I went out to lunch today, and there he was outside of school. Waiting for me. One look in his eyes, and I knew he was my father before he even opened his mouth. There was no Kevin Bloom. What did you do? Hire an actor?”

“Emma, you don’t understand,” I said.

“Yes, I do. Peter told me everything. How you used to be married down in Florida. How you ran away and abandoned him. How could you be so cruel?”

I ignored her. My gaze was on Peter behind her as he put his hand into his pocket.

He produced a large black semiautomatic pistol and waved it at me with a smile. He put it back into his pocket as he placed a shushing finger to his lips.

I cupped my hands over my mouth and nose and shook my head slowly at first but then faster and faster. This couldn’t be happening. Nightmares couldn’t come true.

“Please,” I said to him, finally placing my hands together in a begging gesture. “Peter, she has nothing to do with this.”

His smile never wavered.

Peter suddenly grabbed Emma by the back of her head and rammed her face into a cloth that he took out of his other pocket.

“No!” I screamed, running forward.

“Yes!” Peter screamed back as he kicked me in my stomach with his heavy police tactical boot. Breath whooshed out of me as I was knocked back on my butt to the floor.

Chapter 112

I HELPLESSLY WATCHED EMMA STRUGGLE in Peter’s arms. There was nothing I could do as she glared at me in horror and confusion.

A moment later, her eyes rolled back into her head as she went slack. Peter let her slide onto the hardwood floor in front of me. Her chest was barely moving. She was out cold.

“Much better,” Peter said, taking a roll of duct tape from his jacket pocket. “I thought my boys were annoying. Does she ever shut up?”

He duct-taped my hands behind my back before he dragged me into the living room and handcuffed my ankle to the radiator.

“Nice place, Jeanine,” Peter said, sitting down on the couch across from me. He removed the gun from his jacket and placed it, along with the duct tape, on the cushion beside him before he put his feet up on the coffee table.

“I love all the hardwood. We should have done that picture frame molding in our dining room, don’t you think? What’s this couch? Pottery Barn? I like a lady who treats herself right. What about the modern painting over the fireplace? Let me guess. Crate and Barrel? I mean, how Sex and the City can you get?”

I stared down at the floor.

He put his arms over the back of the couch and let out a breath.

“Hold up. What’s this?” he said, suddenly jumping up and grabbing a Yankees hat off the TV stand.

He looked at me with disgust before he sent it flying, like a Frisbee, over my head.

“Not bad enough ya had to abandon ya ol’ hubby?” he said, reverting to a perfect Southie accent. “Ya had to go and become a Skankee fan, too!”

His eyes went wide and wild as he suddenly lifted the gun off the couch. He came over and pressed it to my forehead, dug it right between my eyes.

“Remember on the beach all those years ago,” he said quietly. “I saved you, gave you everything. A house. A life in paradise. This is how you pay me back? Lies. Faking your death? You’re fucked up, you know that?”

“I don’t care what you do to me,” I said. “I’ll do anything you want. Just please let her go.”

He shook his head. “That’s the best you can do? You’ll do anything I want anyway. Request denied. Emma stays with Daddy. You should have thought about our precious bundle of joy before you came back down to Florida and set my whole entire world on fire.”

He racked the slide of the automatic.

“I knew I should have killed you myself,” he said.

“You killed your first wife. And your baby,” I whispered. “You killed Elena and Teo and that gas station guy. Your new wife, your kids.”

“Yes, I did, Jeanine,” Peter said. “And now for my next act, ladies and germs. I’m going to kill my second wife as slowly and painfully as possible.”

Chapter 113

PETER TOSSED THE GUN back onto the couch and undid my cuffed ankle. He pulled me up by my hair and brought me into the bathroom.

He stoppered the tub drain and turned on the hot tap. He pulled a rubber kitchen glove out of his back pocket and put it over his right hand. When the steaming water reached the top of the tub, he turned off the knob and tossed in some scented bath powder that was sitting on the tub’s edge.

“Smell that. Nice, huh?” he said. “Ocean breeze? No, calla lily. Now, for a little experiment. Let’s see if mermaids really can breathe under water.”

He wrapped his gloved hand around my hair and dunked me, headfirst, under the water. It was burning hot. I tried to struggle, but his hand was like an iron bar pinning me to the tub bottom. He started scraping my forehead against the enamel, as if I were a Scrubbing Bubble. A minute passed. Then two. I was about to open my mouth when he ripped me back up into the world.

I made an animal moaning sound as I sucked air, my face on fire.

“Wheee,” Peter said. “Doesn’t this remind you of something? See, I remember your worst fear, Jeanine. Drowning. Remember the story you told me when you were at the beach with your dad when you were a kid and got caught in a rip current? How you actually stopped struggling and were sinking when Daddy came to your rescue. But guess what, Jeanine? Daddy’s not here. Daddy’s dead. I’m your daddy now.”

My head went back under the scalding water. I held my breath until it felt like my eyes were about to pop, until my skull felt like it was being filled with acid.

I was about to give in and swallow to get it over with when he pulled me back up a second time. When my ears emptied of water, I realized that Peter was laughing. Not a creepy mad-scientist laugh, but a kind of unableto-catch-your-breath, uncontrollable fit of hilarity. As if instead of torturing me to death, he was watching an Eddie Murphy DVD.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping at his eyes after a second. “Forgive me. I always promised myself not to take enjoyment from stuff like this, but this one time I’m making an exception. I knew coming back would be worth it. Oh, and before I forget. After we’ve had our fun, our little daughter is heading down to Mexico with me. I’m going to sell her to the highest bidder. Her fate is on you, Jeanine. I just thought it was important for you to know that. Husbands and wives shouldn’t keep things from each other.”

He burst into laughter again, snorting as he fought to contain himself.

“Now, come on. What are you waiting for? Dunk for those apples,” he said as he slammed me under again.

Chapter 114

PETER WAS WRENCHING MY HEAD out of the water for maybe the fourth or fifth time when I had the hallucination. I must have been deprived of oxygen because all of a sudden, I thought I saw Emma in the doorway behind Peter.

She looked like an angel. There was something over her head. Wings?

No, I realized. It was the glass-and-metal table from my bedroom. She had it reared back like a baseball bat.

At the last second, Peter turned.

But it was too late.

An elongated, rattling explosion of shattering glass rang off the tile walls as Emma crashed it onto his skull like a sledgehammer.

Peter’s eyes rolled back into his head as he went over and down, spurting blood. Burned and feeling dizzy, my palms getting cut by broken glass, I wriggled over his legs on my hands and knees out of the bathroom. I made it as far as the living room when Emma knelt down beside me and cut my taped wrists free with kitchen shears.

“Run,” I said hoarsely. I gained my feet. “Door. Go. Police. Run!”

“Leaving so soon? Without giving Daddy a kiss?” Peter said behind us.

I turned slowly and froze. I had trouble registering what I was seeing.

The glass table had injured Peter. Grievously. His left ear was hanging off, flopping against his jaw, dangling by a string of skin. More skin had been shorn from the side of his head, from his temple to his jawline, the exposed pink tissue like bloody bubble gum.

Peter reached up and grabbed his damaged ear between his thumb and forefinger. He grunted and, with a quick hard tug, tore it free. It made a small, wet, ripping sound, as if he were removing a Band-Aid. He frowned as he looked down at the detached ear. He shook his head before he laid it carefully on the picture shelf on the wall by his shoulder.

“Someone,” he said, nodding to himself with conviction, “is going to have to pay for that.”

Then he smiled, his blue eyes flashing like neon, like a gas burner cranked up all the way.

“Bitches, bitches, bitches!” he said in his Southie accent. “All the same. Can’t live with ya. Can’t kill ya.”

The razor-sharp kitchen scissors were on the floor at his feet. He stooped and picked them up.

“No, wait. Spoke too soon,” he said, snip-snapping them open and closed like a barber about to get to work. “Actually, I can.”

Chapter 115

EMMA AND I stood in the living room like statues, kids caught in a game of freeze tag.

“Daddy doesn’t like bad little girls,” Peter said, grabbing Emma by her wrist with his free hand. He pivoted on his heel as he leaned back and swung her like a rag doll. There was a shattering sound as she crashed face forward into our glass bookcase. It teetered and fell over on top of her, raining down books as she hit the carpet.

That’s when I saw it. Peter’s gun was where he’d left it, on the couch next to the tape. It was my only chance. I spun, my feet sending fallen books flying, as I dove for the couch.

The gun bounced with a double thud off the carpet. I grabbed it, my finger curling around the trigger as I swung around. But I wasn’t in time.

Peter slammed into me, knocking the gun out of my hand as he pile-drived the back of my skull into the hardwood.

I felt as if my head had been split open, as if I’d been hit with a hatchet. I forgot the pain as Peter wrapped his hands around my neck.

I made an involuntary gurgling sound as he started squeezing. More books went flying as I kicked and flailed my arms. My vision dimmed as my oxygen was cut off.

Peter interlaced his fingers around the back of my neck and dug his thumbs into my windpipe, as if he were trying to pry it open.

I’d lost all hope for myself when the tightening at my throat eased up suddenly.

“Don’t go yet, Jeanine. Time for one last round of truth or dare,” Peter whispered in my ear. “I go first. Truth. Remember Ramón Peña? That night on the beach? Yeah, well, you didn’t actually kill him.”

He licked my earlobe and gave it a playful bite.

“That was all me,” he said.

Chapter 116

GASPING, my throat on fire, I stared at Peter’s smile.

“That’s right,” he said with a nod. “Peña was an informant who was going to rat us out to the Feds. I was actually chasing him over the beach, planning to kill him, when I heard you drag-racing down the beach road. As he ran to the sidewalk to wave you down, I shot him three times with a suppressed gun. Next thing I know, he falls into the street in front of your spinning car. There was no way you could have avoided him.”

I shook my head, my eyes slits of disbelief and pain.

Peter nodded. “At first, I thought I was going to have to kill you, too, until I smelled alcohol on your breath and came up with a quick plan. I never got a chance to thank you for giving him a lift back to my house. Great job, Jeanine.”

As Peter’s hands went around my throat again, something happened. A cold ball of pure hatred formed behind my eyes. It traveled down my left arm into my hand, where it formed itself into a claw.

I swung up stiff-armed and buried my sharp nails into the pink, fleshless wound on the side of Peter’s head where his ear used to be. Then I raked them down.

Peter flung himself off me, shrieking. I turned over and lifted myself to my knees, flailing through the pile of fallen books, looking for the gun. I spotted black metal under the couch and dove for it. I pulled the heavy gun up off the floor, in toward my stomach, and slipped my finger over the trigger.

Swinging it around at Peter, I squeezed. Nothing happened. The trigger wouldn’t move. I pushed the safety in with my thumb and then raised the gun again. It still wouldn’t fire.

I screamed as Peter booted me in the side of the head. The gun went flying out of my hands. It spun as it sailed over the hardwood, down the hallway, and toward the bedroom.

“It’s called a double-action pistol, you dumb bitch. You need to squeeze the trigger really hard in the beginning to get off the first round,” Peter said, stepping toward it. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

I jumped up and ran in the opposite direction. I was going to run out the front door screaming for help, but I knew what Peter would do to Emma.

I turned at the last second and ran into the kitchen. I grabbed at the knife block beside the stove. The big eight-inch Henckels slid easily into my grip. I raised it over my head and ran back into the living room.

Peter, standing by the bedroom doorway, now had the gun trained at my face. He actually laughed as he watched me coming.

Still chuckling, he tried to pull the trigger.

Nothing happened. Instead of disengaging the safety, I must have put it on!

I kept coming and swinging as I dove forward. The barrel of the gun hit me in my mouth, knocking two of my teeth loose. I still kept coming.

My knuckles brushed the smooth underside of Peter’s freshly shaven chin as I came down with all my might.

I opened his throat and buried the knife to the hilt in his collarbone.

He fell back into my bedroom, making a wet, gagging sound. I remember warm blood in my eyes and on my cheeks as I turned and ran for Emma. Kicking books away, I found Emma’s hand and dragged her to the door before she groggily got to her feet. We hobbled out of the apartment and down the stairwell, clutching each other.

A woman with a bad face-lift, walking her Labradoodle, screamed and took off sprinting when she saw me come out of the building’s service entrance onto the sidewalk in my bloody bathrobe. When we got to the Korean grocery store on the corner of Third Avenue, I stopped by the florist sink beside the racks of cheap roses. I was still hosing the glass out of Emma’s eyes when the first cop car jumped the curb.