Shadow of Betrayal

CHAPTER 14

Her parents were dead.

Her sister was dead.

And the only person who could be blamed for it was Marion herself. That’s what she believed. How could there be any other answer?

She had taken Iris on the train north from Penn Station back to Marion’s hometown of Montreal. She had used the false passports her friend in Côte d’Ivoire had given her when she purchased the tickets. She hoped it was enough to fool whoever was looking for her.

While the child was asleep, Marion would stare out the window, not sure what she was going to do, but knowing if anyone could help her, it would be her parents.

Sure, her sister was living back at home, and bringing a child into the house wasn’t going to do a lot to help Emily’s recovery. The divorce Emily had gone through had been wrenching. Marion couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like when her sister found out her husband, who never wanted to have children, was having an affair with someone who was now pregnant. Of course, that had been over a year ago. The baby was born by now.

Marion knew her sister well. She knew Emily might not say anything, but she would feel humiliated, and think of herself as a freshly minted spinster too old to have children. It wasn’t true, but that’s the way Emily’s mind worked. Poetic and tragic.

But Marion couldn’t worry about her sister’s feelings anymore. She’d been living with Emily’s drama since the day she was born. It was time to stop getting pulled into it. The reason was stretched out in the seat next to her, not asleep at that moment, but content. Iris.

They arrived in her hometown that evening, then grabbed a taxi at the station. The cabbie took a second look at her and Iris, but said nothing.

Iris seemed very interested in the world outside the taxi as they drove through the streets. The smile on the child’s face, the smile that was almost always there, seemed a fraction broader. Marion took this as a good sign.

As they turned onto the street where her parents lived, the anxiousness Marion had been feeling for so long began to subside. Soon she would be in the home she grew up in, eating her mother’s food, sleeping in the room that had been hers, safe in the cocoon of family. But as they neared the house, she realized something wasn’t right.

On the lawn in front of her house were dozens of flickering candles and bundles of flowers, and people, their heads bowed. The house itself, though, was dark.

“Ici?” the driver said, not hiding the surprise in his voice.

“No, no. Keep driving,” she told him in French. “I must have the wrong street.”

The driver seemed relieved when she gave him the name of the next street over.

“Horrible,” he said as he glanced over at her childhood home. “Just horrible.”

She almost asked him what had happened. His words indicated he knew, but her own voice had left her. Someone had died in the house. There was no question about it. But who? Why? Water pooled in her eyes, but she held back her tears.

On the next street over she got out, paid the cabbie, then watched him drive away.

Ten minutes later, at a pay phone several blocks away, she called for another taxi.

“Where to?” the driver asked once she and Iris were in the back seat.

She had thought about this while she’d waited for him to arrive. She was afraid to use her false ID, thinking it might create a trail someone could pick up on. And there was no way she could use her real ID. She needed to find someplace anonymous.

“Saint Laurent,” she said, naming the borough on the west side of Montreal. “Boulevard Marcel-Laurin.”

The cabbie eyed her in his rearview mirror. “Do you have a specific location?”

She hadn’t recalled the name of the motel, but knew basically where it was located. A sleazy place that she’d heard charged room rates by the hour. It worried her to take Iris there, but she at least knew they wouldn’t ask for an ID.

“I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I need to know now.”

She took a quick breath. She was on the edge of breaking down, but she forced herself to keep it together. “It’s a motel, okay? I don’t remember the name.”

The driver hesitated. “Motel Monique?”

“Yes,” she said, realizing he was right. “That’s it.”

“Deposit,” he said.

“What?”

“I need a deposit first.”

“I’ll pay you when we get there,” she said.

“Maybe you don’t have the money.”

“I have the money.”

“Then pay me now. I’m not going to wait around while you say you’re going inside to get the cash from one of your … customers.”

Marion stared at the man’s eyes in the mirror, unable to believe what she was hearing.

“I’m not a…” She paused. “I’ve got a child with me! You think I’m a prostitute?”

“Wouldn’t be the first hooker to have a kid, would you? Twenty dollars right now or no ride.”

She stared at him for another second, then broke eye contact and pulled a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse. She dropped it in the front seat, purposely avoiding his outstretched hand.

“Can we go now?” she said.

The driver shook his head a couple of times, like he’d seen it before and knew he would see it again. He dropped the taxi into drive and pulled out onto the street.

She spotted the Motel Monique a half a block before they arrived. It was a big dingy box of a building with a faded sign out front lit by a couple of floodlights. But most important, the neon sign that had been tacked on at the bottom said Vacancy.

The first thing she did after the cabbie dropped her and Iris off in front of the motel was to walk over to a group of newspaper dispensers in front of the liquor store next door. There were no more copies of Le Devoir left, so she was forced to buy a copy of the English paper, the Gazette.

It was right on front, the lead story.

She stared at it, wanting to read more. But she knew if she did, she’d break down right there on the sidewalk. So she forced herself to fold the paper and stick it into her travel case.

Iris started to whimper against her shoulder. Marion repositioned her arm around the girl’s back, then said, “It’s okay, sweetie. Everything’s okay. You can lie down in a minute. Would you like that?”

The tone of Marion’s voice carried an undercurrent of panic, but there was enough comfort to settle Iris. The whimpering ceased, and the little girl lay her head heavy against Marion’s shoulder. A few seconds later her breathing was deep and even. Asleep now, no need for a bed.

Marion walked back to the Motel Monique clutching the child to her with one hand while pulling her suitcase behind her in the other.

From the moment she entered the motel’s office, the clerk eyed her suspiciously. He was sitting behind a poorly laminated counter with the very classy addition of a Plexiglas wall that extended from the counter’s top all the way to the ceiling. There was a small circle cut into the see-through divider about a foot and a half above the counter, and another, half-moon shaped, where the plexi met the laminate. Like an old movie-house kiosk, only scummier. The plexi was scratched and worn, and at some point in the past several years it looked like someone had thrown liquid against the surface, and no one had gotten around to cleaning it yet. But it worked well with the rest of the office’s décor: old, barely functional, and uncared for.

“Help you?” the clerk said as Marion approached the window. He was only slightly better than the room itself. At least it looked like he’d taken a shower in the last forty-eight hours.

“I need a room,” she said.

His gaze flicked to Iris, then back at Marion. “For how long?”

“Just one night.”

“The whole night?”

“I just need a place to sleep. For me and my child.”

“That’s your kid?” he asked, again with the suspicious eyes.

“Just tell me how much.”

“There’s an EconoLodge not too far from here. You’ll be more comfortable there.”

“Your sign outside says Vacancy. Are you telling me you don’t have any rooms?” she said.

“Lady, you’re not likely to get a lot of sleep here.”

She pulled out several bills. “How much? Sixty dollars?”

A slight widening of his eyes told her sixty was more than the going rate, but she wanted to close the deal.

“Here,” she said. She put three twenties on the counter just her side of the half-moon opening. “That should do it, right?”

He looked at the money for a moment, then reached under the counter and came up with a key.

“Third floor, in the front,” he said. “You’ll hear the street, but most of the other guests prefer rooms in the back.”

She understood what he was trying to tell her. “Thank you,” she said.

She exchanged her money for the key.

“Elevator’s out the door and to the right.”

The clerk had been right about the room. She could hear every car that passed on the street, but while there were the occasional voices from the far end of the motel corridor, there didn’t seem to be anyone using the rooms nearby.

Iris didn’t seem to mind any of it. She was fast asleep on the bed beside Marion. Something Marion wished she could also do. She had never felt this tired in her life.

Bone weary. It was a term she’d heard one of her American colleagues use. Now she knew what the woman had meant, for her exhaustion went way beyond skin deep, touching every cell in her body.

But sleep wasn’t coming. Not yet.

It wasn’t that she was afraid she’d chosen the wrong place to stay. Far from it. The fact that the clerk hadn’t even had her fill out any kind of registration card had confirmed she’d made the right choice.

It was the story in the newspaper. She had read it three times, then dropped the pages on the floor.

Her parents were dead.

Her sister was dead.

The paper had said it looked like an accident, a leak in a gas line that had filled the home while her family slept. But Marion knew that couldn’t be possible. Her father had been meticulous in his care of the house. He’d had the entire gas system replaced only five years earlier. Far too soon for it to be experiencing any fatigue, and far too late for any installation mistakes to make themselves known. Besides, the new system had included leak detectors in each of the rooms where gas was used. The article had made no mention of detectors, and Marion found it impossible to think of a scenario where they all malfunctioned at once.

Her family was dead, and it was her fault. There was no other possible explanation. Whoever was looking for her had all the information they needed. For starters, they obviously had access to her UN file, and that would be more than enough. It would contain a history of anywhere she had lived, the names of places she had worked prior to the UN, her college transcripts, and the names and address of her family.

Maybe they thought she was in the house, too. At the very least, they’d thought the possibility she’d show in Montreal was high. Maybe they had tried getting her parents to tell them where she was. The article had made no mention of potential foul play, but could the police have been hiding that? Could her family have been tortured to see if they knew anything?

Oh, God, she thought, I’ve killed them.

Beside her, Iris smacked her lips in her sleep, then turned toward Marion, nuzzling against the woman’s side before settling back down. Marion looked at the child, knowing she was the cause of what had happened but unable to blame the girl. It was Marion who had decided to safeguard her. She could have easily told her superiors in Côte d’Ivoire about the child. An appropriate place would have been found for Iris, and Marion’s family would still be alive.

But that hadn’t been the path she had chosen. She hadn’t trusted her own people to keep Iris out of harm.

A thought occurred to her. Maybe everything would have still been all right if she hadn’t started digging into similar cases. Maybe that was the trigger.

She closed her eyes. It was too much for her to think about, too much for her to consider. There was only one truth.

Her family was dead. And it was her fault.

The first light of morning woke her. She was still dressed, and propped up in the same position she had been in since she’d climbed into bed the previous evening.

Iris was asleep, lying comfortably on her back, her face slack and restful. The girl was amazing that way. She never seemed to have a problem sleeping. Maybe it was a kid thing, Marion thought. But she wasn’t sure. She had seen plenty of children at the orphanages she visited, even at Frau Roslyn’s, who woke up at least once or twice a night.

Marion eased herself off the bed so as not to disturb the child, and went into the bathroom. The shower looked questionable, but she knew she needed it, so she turned the water on as hot as she could stand it and got in. The stiffness she had felt upon waking began to loosen under the steaming water. Once she was done, she used one of the threadbare towels to dry off, then went back into the room.

She stopped after only a few feet and stared at the bed.

Iris was gone.

“Iris, where are you?”

She took a step to her right so she could look around one side of the bed, but the girl wasn’t there.

“Iris?”

She shot a quick look at the door, but the security chain was still in place from when she’d locked up the night before.

“Iris?”

There was the crinkle of paper. It came from the other side of the bed.

Marion rushed over, then breathed a sigh of relief.

Iris sat on the floor grinning as she picked up one of the pages of the discarded newspaper and flapped it up and down. She let out a giggle as she noticed Marion.

“Having fun?” Marion asked. She picked the child up, hugging her tight.

“Why don’t you stay on the bed while I get dressed, hmm?”

She set Iris down on the mattress, then retrieved the paper. She hesitated as she caught sight of the front page picture showing the house she’d grown up in. She almost put the paper back on the floor, but Iris was reaching out for it and making sounds like it was hers. Marion shook herself, then smiled and gave the newspaper to the girl.

Iris immediately began playing with it again. Marion suspected that most five-year-olds would pretend to read the paper or at least be interested in the pictures. But Iris wasn’t at that point yet. She seemed caught up in the sheer joy of the sound the paper made as she moved it and hit it and rubbed it against itself.

There was a small TV bolted to a shelf against the wall. Marion couldn’t locate a remote, so she walked over and turned it on, and was greeted with a scene of multiple naked bodies entwined in some kind of grotesque semblance of sex. The moans that came out of the speaker sounded more rehearsed than natural. Porno for the typical Motel Monique guest, she realized as she hastily changed the channel. She found a local morning news show, then got dressed as she watched, hoping to hear more about what had happened to her family.

The lead story of the six-thirty update concerned the kidnapping and murder of a prominent American official in New York City. There was even a police sketch of a possible suspect. Marion glanced up at it as she was pulling on her pants.

Then the story ended, and a new graphic appeared over the shoulder of the news anchor. It was a picture of her parents, and superimposed over them the word:

Tragedy.

“Police now say the deaths two nights ago of a Montreal family while they slept might not have been an accident after all.” The anchor was a young woman looking far too put together for such an early hour. “Francine Blanc is at the scene of the fast-breaking story.”

Marion sat down on the edge of the bed as the image on the TV switched to an outside shot across the street from her parents’ house. There was a near clone of the anchor standing on the sidewalk facing the camera. She was holding a microphone in her hand.

“Francine, what can you tell us?” the anchor said.

“Nicole, police now think there is a very real possibility that this was not an accident. As you know, yesterday morning, the Dupuis family was found dead in their beds by a friend of the family who became concerned when Madame Dupuis failed to show up for work. At that time it appeared that the family had succumbed to a gas leak sometime during the previous night. While it is still believed that gas is what killed them, sources inside the police department are now saying the leak may have been caused by a deliberate act.”

They showed some video from the previous day, including an interview with the person who had found the bodies. It was Madame Devore from the school where Marion’s mother taught.

“It’s terrible,” Madame Devore said. There were tears streaming down her cheeks. “They were just… please, I can’t talk about this now. Excuse me. Please.”

There was a shot of one of the bodies being removed from the house. It was on a stretcher and covered with a sheet. Marion wondered who it was. Her mother? Father? Emily?

A new shot showed the candlelight vigil that had formed the night before, as the voice-over talked about a gathering of friends. Then the image of the reporter returned.

“It’s clear that the Dupuis family had many people who loved them. Nicole.”

The image on the TV split, the reporter on the right, and the anchor on the left.

“We’re hearing there might be another member of the family,” the anchor said. “Is that correct?”

“Yes.” The reporter was nodding. “Neighbors tell us there is a younger daughter who works in New York. One person told us she is with the UN, but I have not been able to confirm that yet. I can tell you that police have not been able to make contact with her, and think she might currently be on assignment overseas.”

“So she’s not a suspect.”

“No. Not at this time.”

Marion stood up and turned the TV off. She stood there staring at the blank screen for several minutes.

Dead. Gone. No more.

No more reassuring smiles from her father. No more shopping trips with her mother. No more long talks with her sister. No more family Christmases. No more trips to the mountains. No more anything.

Perhaps she wasn’t a suspect, but she was an unwilling accomplice.

A shout from Iris brought her back. The newspaper had fallen on the floor.

“Come on,” Marion said. “It’s time to get ready and go.”

They left the motel five minutes later.

Marion wanted to go back to the house. She wanted to get inside to see for herself. She knew it was stupid, but it was her family. She couldn’t just leave.

She had another taxi drive her by just after 9 a.m. There were several police cars out front, and a crowd of the curious gathered on the sidewalk.

She made another try at 4 p.m. This time the police were gone, but some of the crowd remained. That was okay. It was still too early for her to try to get inside. In the daylight, she would be spotted in a second, and would be detained by the police, and no doubt forced to tell more than she was willing to.

She still had Iris to worry about. That had to be her first concern. But she wasn’t going to leave Montreal without getting inside. She owed her family that much respect at least.

She felt like another taxi ride down the street would be one too many. Even if it happened after dark, someone might start to get suspicious. But her choices were limited. She couldn’t rent a car, and she certainly couldn’t get in touch with any of her friends and ask for help. God knows what would happen to them if she did.

Steal a car? Right. She’d seen it in movies, but suspected it was even harder than it looked. That was not even close to an option.

Her only choice was to walk in.

Her suitcase was a problem, though. She needed someplace to stash it. Her best solution was the same hotel they’d stayed in the night before. So it was back to the Motel Monique, where she arranged for a second night in the same room. The clerk didn’t even question her this time. He simply took her money and handed over the key.

Suitcase dropped off, she and Iris headed back out. At a sporting goods store, she picked up a hooded pullover sweatshirt. It was black, and would hide most of her features when the hood was up. She then found a diner, and waited there until dark.

At 9:15 p.m. she called another taxi. This time instead of driving down her street, she had the driver drop her and Iris several blocks away. They walked, avoiding any direct eye contact with the few people they passed. When they reached her parents’ block, Marion slowed, eyeing everything in case there was someone waiting for her.

“No,” she said to herself as they neared the house, not hiding her frustration.

There were a dozen people out front again, and more candles. Another vigil. She wanted to be touched by the gesture, but all she could feel was anger at being denied access to the house yet again.

But when a few of the people began moving off, she realized the impromptu service was ending. She stopped one property away, and turned her head to Iris, to hide her face from those leaving the gathering.

A few of the people were talking as they walked by, and Marion was surprised to find she recognized one of the voices as a friend she hadn’t seen in over a year. She wanted to turn and call out to her, to feel the warmth and sympathy of her friend’s arms around her, but she remained where she was.

Once the steps began to recede, she chanced a look back toward her house. The only things left were a few dying candles. The crowd that had been there was gone.

Marion glanced up and down the street, making sure that there were no stragglers, then she started walking again.

As she got closer, she could hear the TV on in the Blair house. Mr. Blair was the only one who lived there anymore, his wife gone at least four years now. He’d been growing more and more deaf, and the volume of the TV had been getting increasingly louder every time Marion visited home. Her mother had joked that if they were watching the same channel, they could mute their own TV and still hear what was going on.

Marion slowed her pace as she moved in front of the house she had grown up in. When she reached the far corner of the property, she stopped again. She had noted the tape across the front entrance, but that was fine. The key she had worked on both the front and the back doors, and the latter was much preferable.

She glanced around again, saw no one at all, then took a deep breath.

“I need you to be quiet, okay?” she whispered needlessly to Iris. The child was one of the quietest she’d ever known.

Iris lifted her head up for a moment, then lay back against Marion’s shoulder.

“Okay, then. Let’s go.”

Marion turned and walked rapidly down the side of the house to the backyard. She had expected to find more tape across the rear door, but there was none. She slipped the key into the lock and turned it. Five seconds later, she was standing in her mother’s kitchen.

She walked through the first floor, looking at everything but touching nothing. It was like she was in her parents’ house, but she wasn’t. The familiarity was all there. The pictures. The dining table where she used to do her homework. The couch in the living room where she’d caught her sister making out with Peter from down the street. But even surrounded by all these things, it felt empty. Soulless, she thought. Home to no one.

In the living room, she hesitated at the base of the stairs before mounting them.

This is why you’re here, she thought. You wanted to see this.

With a nod of self-confirmation, she climbed up to the second floor.

She didn’t know what she expected to feel, but numbness was a surprise. She looked in her sister’s room first. Someone had taken the time to put the duvet back in place. Not a perfectly made bed, but one that was hard to imagine had recently held her sister’s body.

She moved to her parents’ room. The duvet had been straightened here, too. Marion was about to turn and leave, when she spotted the picture on her mother’s dresser. It was a family photo from a cousin’s wedding two years earlier. It was the last formal photo the four of them had taken together. Marion walked over and leaned in for a closer look.

Her parents, happy and still very much in love. Her sister trying hard not to show the effects of her own deteriorating marriage. And Marion, proud of her parents, proud of her new job at the UN.

She reached out with her free hand and picked up the picture, knowing before she even touched it she wouldn’t be putting it back. It was coming with her.

She carried Iris and the picture back into the hallway and walked over to the room at the front of the house. Her room. Like the others, the door was open wide, it, too, having been checked once the first body had been found.

Like the others, her bed was also made. Only instead of looking like a rush job, someone had taken the time to make it look good. Her mother. And the sheets underneath the duvet would be clean, waiting for Marion to come home for a visit.

My God, what have I done?

She slumped down onto her bed, and placed Iris beside her. The child’s mouth was turned down, and her eyes were wide. It looked as if she was about to cry. She must have been sensing Marion’s own desire to let the tears come.

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Marion said. “We’ll leave soon.”

Water began to pool at the base of the girl’s eyes. It was the last thing Marion wanted. She tried to think of something to distract the child. Out of desperation she pulled the motel key out of her pocket and waved it in front of Iris. It was a regular metal key attached to a plastic rectangle with the name of the motel and the room number. Iris reached out for it, so Marion let her take it. But the child merely threw it across the room, the key landing near the door.

As Marion got up to retrieve it, she happened to look at her old painted dresser near the door. On top was the stuffed bear her father had given her when she’d been a little girl. Pauline.

Marion smiled at all the memories Pauline represented. She grabbed the bear and handed it to Iris.

This time the distraction worked. The child’s tears began to recede as she focused on her new stuffed animal. Pauline had a way of doing that, Marion remembered. The bear had always been good at pushing the tears back.

Marion realized there were several things she wanted to take with her, memories of her family, of her life. She had no idea how long she would have to stay away from home, from Montreal for that matter. Maybe they would continue to chase her, forcing her to be on the run for months, or maybe even for years. If that was the case, she needed something to give her strength. She needed the power of her memories.

While Iris played, Marion found an old box full of teen magazines in her closest. She pulled the periodicals out and set them in a neat stack where the box had been. At the door to her room, she realized the motel key was still on the floor. She picked it up and put it in the box, then walked through the house picking up items she felt the need to keep. A few more pictures, a scarf her mother had knitted for her, a copy of A Wrinkle in Time that her father had read with her so many years ago, a small wooden box that contained a gold-plated bracelet her sister had given to her for Christmas one year, even the grocery list her mother had started and pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet.

When she was done, she realized there was no way she was going to be able to carry the box and Iris at the same time.

What a stupid idea, she thought, knowing that the box was going to have to stay. She could put the scarf around her neck, and perhaps take one of the pictures out of its frame and stuff it in her pocket, but that was about it. The rest had been a waste of time.

But then she saw the key hanger next to the back door. There were three sets of keys, each on a separate hook. Her father and mother had never been big on driving, choosing instead to take public transportation or ride their bikes to where they wanted to go. So their keys were limited to those they needed for the house and, in her mother’s case, work. But Emily’s keys were different. She’d had a car. An old Saab, unless she’d sold it. The set of keys hanging from the hook on the left had a large key that could only be for a car. It was a duplicate, so there was no company name on it, but the vehicle had to be outside somewhere.

Marion grabbed her sister’s keys, then sneaked a peak around the edge of the curtain in the living room. The only things she could see were a couple of cars parked directly in front of the house — neither familiar — and a third car driving by on the street. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the people inside the vehicle were gazing at her house. Probably curious about the makeshift memorial in the front yard. All the same, she watched the car until it disappeared.

Once the vehicle was out of sight, she set the box down on the couch, then ran back upstairs. Iris, still happily occupied with the old bear, look up when Marion hurried in.

“We’re leaving in a moment,” Marion said.

She crossed the room to her window. It was a view she’d seen thousands of times before, tens of thousands even. The houses on the other side of the street had changed little. Some of the trees were larger, but that was about it. And like there had always been, cars lined either side of the street, waiting for their owners to wake and need them again.

She spotted Emily’s car right away. The old silver two-door Saab was parked directly across the street. A lucky spot, they would have said. As Marion smiled, some of the tension left her body. Here was the break she needed, not just because she could take the box with them, but now they had transportation. Now they could drive to the other end of Canada if they wanted. It would free them, for a little while anyway.

“Come on, baby,” she said as she scooped up Iris and headed downstairs.

In the living room, she set Iris on the couch, then picked up the box to bring out to the car first. But Iris would have none of it. She reached out and grabbed Marion’s leg.

“It’ll just be for a minute,” Marion said.

But the child wouldn’t let go.

“Fine. You first then.” She set the box down, then picked Iris up.

Marion knew it wasn’t the best plan. But it would have to do. Iris would only be by herself in the car a few minutes at most. And it was doubtful anyone would notice her.

Marion carried the child out of the house and around the side. She was careful when she reached the front, checking twice to make sure it was quiet, then she scooted along the edge of the property to the sidewalk.

To be safe, she walked down half a block to avoid the light from one of the streetlamps before crossing the street. As she approached her sister’s car, she half expected there to be another notice from the police, marking it as part of the crime scene. But there was nothing. Either they hadn’t realized it belonged to her sister, or they didn’t care.

She slipped the key into the lock and opened the door. Inside, the dome light came on. She leaned in and turned it off.

“Okay, you’re going to stay here while I go get the box,” she said to Iris. “I’ll be right back, so you’ll be fine.”

As she put the girl down on the small back seat, Iris’s lower lip began to tremble.

“No, don’t cry, sweetie. Just play with your bear.” Marion looked around. “Where is it?”

But the bear wasn’t there. They must have left it upstairs, she thought. That’s why Iris hadn’t wanted to be left on the couch.

“Dammit,” Marion said under her breath.

She glanced around to see if there was anything that could keep Iris occupied. The best she could come up with was a map of eastern Canada, but it seemed to do the trick.

“I’ll only be a minute,” she said, then shut the door and hurried back to the house.

Once inside, she went straight for the box in the living room. She started to pick it up, but then stopped. Pauline.

She first checked around the couch to make sure Iris hadn’t dropped the bear there, then ran upstairs, her gaze focused on the steps to make sure it wasn’t somewhere along the way.

She expected to see the bear sitting in the middle of the bed when she entered her bedroom, but it wasn’t.

“Where the hell did you go?” she said, annoyed.

She got down on her knees and looked under the bed. Nothing.

She retraced her steps back into the hallway and down the stairs to the living room couch. It was nowhere. But that didn’t make any sense. It had to be somewhere between the bed and couch. She knew she should just forget it and leave, but Iris had liked the bear, and it warmed Marion to think about the connection it gave the girl to Marion’s father.

She headed back upstairs into the bedroom. She was almost at the point of wanting to tear the room apart when she spotted it wedged between the bed and her nightstand.

With a relieved laugh, she pulled it out and headed back downstairs. She put the bear in the box, then picked the container up and turned to leave. She made it halfway across the living room when she heard the noise.

It wasn’t much. Just a subtle scrape at best, but it had come from behind her, near the front door. She looked over her shoulder as she heard a second scrape. Not near the front door, just beyond it. Outside.

She froze, her gaze darting from one window to the other on either side of the front door. The curtains were drawn, but the light from the streetlamp made them glow. As she watched, a dark shadow of a man appeared in one window. He was heading from the front door toward the side of the house.

It’s them, she thought. They’ve found me.

She set the box on the floor carefully so as not to make any noise, then tiptoed to the back door. She hesitated just inside it for only a second, then stepped through into the backyard. Unless the intruder had doubled back when she’d turned away, he’d be coming down the side to her right, so she moved across the yard to her left. When she turned the corner, she was relieved to see no one waiting for her.

She went only a few feet down the side, then stopped. She could hear steps. Faint, like someone was making an effort to be quiet. They were around the back side of the house now. Whoever it was had missed spotting her by seconds.

She waited, then heard a very light creak. Only someone who had lived in the house would have noticed it, and known what it meant. Someone had entered the kitchen. Then the creak came again. Not one person. Two.

Her breathing began to increase. She reached a shaky hand back and pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her head. She crept toward the front of the house, taking careful steps so as not to draw any attention. As she did, she listened for the progress of those inside, knowing the deeper they went, the better her chances of getting away.

She stopped a few feet before the front of the house, and waited until she was sure at least one of her pursuers was in the living room. That’s when she made her move.

She rushed through her parents’ front yard and across the street to the Saab in seconds. As she opened the door, she thought she could hear noise from the house. Had they heard her?

She was in near panic as she climbed into the car. The keys slipped in her fingers and nearly dropped on the floor. But she managed to get them in the ignition and get the car started.

“Hold on, baby,” she said to Iris, who was lying unsecured in the back seat. She knew the words would mean nothing, but was unable to do anything else at the moment.

Marion backed up as far as she could, then pulled out of the spot, just clearing the car in front of her. As she started to press down on the accelerator, movement outside to her left caught her attention.

She turned just in time to see a man approaching her car. His hair was short and blond, and the look on his face determined, like he would stop her at any cost. There was also something familiar about him. The hair was wrong, but she swore she had seen his face before.

And then he was gone, left behind as the Saab’s speed increased.

She worried that he might pull out a gun and shoot at her. But as she monitored him in her rearview mirror, he just stood there watching her drive away. Then it came to her. The news report that morning. The man who had killed the American official. The sketch. That’s who this guy looked like.

But before she could process that thought further, she saw something else in her mirror.

A car making a fast U-turn and heading in her direction.