The Quickie

Chapter 80

"MORE SPARKLING WATER, signora? More Chianti, signore?"

"Si," Paul and I said in unison. Let the good times roll, right?

The stubbled young waiter beamed with elation as he topped off our glasses, almost as if we'd just granted him his life's wish. Behind him, the pale stone walls of Monticiano, the newest and most expensive Italian restaurant in Greenridge, Connecticut, glowed like a Tuscan sunset.

Paul's surprise dinner trip north to Litchfield County 's only four-star Italian had been more than welcome after my draining morning at the courthouse.

After what I'd managed to pull off with Jeff Buslik, I thought, as I took another mind-blowing bite of my fettuccine with truffles, I deserved a trip to the real Tuscany.

"Signora, the signore would like to propose a toast," Paul said.

"To the future," he said.

"To the future."

We clinked glasses.

And to us being safe and together once and for all, I thought, taking a cool, clear sip of my San Pellegrino.

Paul drank his wine and leaned back, smiling. It was like he somehow sensed everything was okay, now that the craziness was over, and that our new life – our real life – was about to start.

In the flickering candlelight, I stared at Paul, almost as if for the first time. His sandy hair, his intense blue eyes, his strong hands – hands that had fought for me.

"Honey? Honey, listen," Paul said, and he leaned across the table toward me. "Can you believe it?"

From the speakers, Frank Sinatra was singing "The Way You Look Tonight."

Our wedding song.

Could it have gotten any more disgustingly perfect? My heart floated like the bubbles in my glass. That confirmed it, I decided. Paul and I would be together now. Finally happy, finally free. With the child we'd always wanted.

"Well, what do you think?" Paul asked after the song ended.

"The pasta?" I said. "Bellissima."

"No," Paul said. "The new neighborhood."

Greenridge might have been just another quaint New England small town, except for the pricey art galleries, the pricey wine shops, and the pricey day spas up and down Main Street. Norman Rockwell meets SoHo. Monticiano itself was housed in a repurposed nineteenth-century firehouse. I'd read in New York magazine that a lot of New York City fashion designers and artists had country homes here. With the second-lowest crime rate in the entire Northeast, why wouldn't they?

"It's mind boggling that we're going to move anywhere," I said. "But to here?"

"And you haven't even seen the house yet," Paul said. "The tour starts after dessert."

A new house, I thought. I mean, a roof that didn't leak? Doors that closed and stayed closed? I shook my head with amazement.

I think it was still spinning when the waiter came back ten minutes later. "Some cappuccino, signora? Tonight's dessert special is cannoli with a lemon cream."

"Si," I said, leaning back on my banquette, basking in my relief, the golden glow of the night, our insanely good luck. "Si, si, si."

Chapter 81

HALF AN HOUR LATER, Paul was driving faster than he ought to have been in his Camry. My shoulder belt and stomach tensed simultaneously as he suddenly braked, and we swerved off the ridiculously bucolic road we'd been winding our way along over hill and dale.

The sign outside my window, placed at the base of a stone fence, no doubt by kind woodland creatures or perhaps Robert Frost himself, read "Evergreens."

In the fading light, the shadows of softly swaying pine trees along the drive printed a golden barcode across the fresh asphalt.

"What do you think?" Paul said, stopping the car.

"So far," I said, looking around, "so awesome."

"You hear that?" Paul said, rolling down his window.

I listened. All I could hear was the wind rustling the leaves.

"Hear what?"

Paul smiled.

"Exactly," he said. "This is what it sounds like when there are no jackhammers or bus engines or raving homeless people. I've read about this somewhere. It's called peace and quiet, I think."

"What are those grayish-looking things alongside the road – with that green stuff on top?" I said, squinting out my window.

"Those are called trees," Paul said. "They talk about them in the brochure. They come with the house – if you upgrade the cabinets."

Paul restarted the car and continued on to the top of the hill, where he stopped again so I could see all the houses in our neighborhood. They were beautiful, what else? New England-style colonials, maybe a half dozen of them, well spaced and landscaped down a rolling valley.

"Okay," I said, "what's the downside? Where's the catch? We're right in the landing path of an airport?"

"Sorry," Paul said as we began making our way back down the hill. "Greenridge has an ordinance against downsides. Besides, we've had enough downsides to last a couple of lifetimes."

Paul didn't know the half of it.

Chapter 82

WE PASSED AN ENORMOUS PLAYGROUND, tennis courts, a manicured baseball field. I looked out at the precisely laid, brand-new white lines. Yep, it looked like a real neighborhood. Leave It to Beaver's maybe. My head continued to spin.

The sun was almost completely gone when we stopped in front of a large house beside a park with a stream.

"What's this? The sales office?" I said.

Paul shook his head. He took out a key.

"It's the clubhouse," he said. "C'mon, I'll show you the lay of the land."

Inside were conference rooms, several flat-screen TVs, a well-stocked weight room. Fliers on the bulletin board touted babysitting and block parties. There was a sign-up sheet for something called a progressive dinner at one-fifty a head.

"And they're putting in a pool in the spring," Paul said, plopping down on a leather couch in the vaulted lobby space.

"How can…," I started. "Even with your raise, this seems…"

"The houses are expensive, but it's pretty far from the city, so it's less than you think. My new salary will cover us and then some. You want to see our house? At least it will be ours – if you love it as much as I do."

I put up my hand.

"Just give me a second to pick up my jaw first."

There was a halo of last light over the western hills as we pulled off the paved drive onto a dirt road that was still under construction. We crawled slowly past mounds of broken rock and heavy machinery.

"I need to take it slow," Paul said. "There are nails and bolts scattered around from the construction. Don't want to get a flat. Wait, we're here."

The dove-gray house Paul pulled in front of was… well, perfect. I took in the front porch, the soaring brick chimney, the graceful dormers on the third floor. Wait a second – there was a third floor? Everything looked done except the landscaping, which I was quite certain would be wonder-ful, too.

"C'mon," Paul said. "I'll show you the master suite."

"Are we allowed to be here? Don't we have to wait until the closing? Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure," Paul said with a laugh. "I'll leave the headlights on so we can see where we're going."

We walked over the mounded dirt, and Paul opened the unlocked front door. Suddenly he threw me over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and pretended to trip as he brought me across the threshold. Our laughter and footsteps echoed off the gleaming hardwood floors. "I love it already," I whispered. "I really love it, Paul."

Paul showed me where everything would be. I could hardly take in the airplane hangar-size kitchen, my eyes darting from maple to granite to stainless steel. Even in the dark, the tree-covered hills out the windows were breathtaking.

"And this is where the nursery could go," Paul said, hugging me in one of the upstairs rooms.

Outside the "nursery" window, stars were twinkling like diamond dust in the midnight-blue sky just above the dark treetops. My tears started flowing then. It was suddenly real. Our baby would grow up in this room. I saw myself holding a sweet-smelling, cooing bundle and pointing out the constellations, the rising moon.

Paul wiped away the tears on my face and kissed the ones on my throat.

"That bad, huh?" he whispered.

Then, as suddenly as I'd started, I stopped crying.

Because at that moment, the headlights of Paul's car, which had been lighting the house, suddenly went out.

The tears went cold on my cheeks as the house turned as black as the spaces between the stars.

Chapter 83

"WHAT THE -?" Paul said in the dark. "Is it the battery? You have any idea, Lauren?"

I stared at him. What the hell was going on? Whatever it was, I didn't like it.

"Hey, wait. I know," Paul said. "My fault. I saw the tank was low yesterday, and I forgot to fill it. All this driving, we must have run out of gas."

"Are you sure?" I said. I felt a little panicked actually. Guess I wasn't really used to the country yet.

"Calm down, Lauren. This isn't the South Bronx, Detective," Paul said and laughed. "I'm positive that's it. There has to be a gas can floating around here with all this construction equipment. You stay here. I'll grab the flashlight and pooch around."

"I'll come with you," I said. The unlit house had gone from cozy to creepy in no seconds flat.

"In those heels?" Paul said.

"Hey," I thought, regaining my senses. "Instead of foraging for fuel, why don't you just call Triple A with your cell phone?" Or better yet, I thought, glancing down the stairs into the darkness, 911.

Paul laughed after a minute.

"That's my Lauren," he said, going into his pocket. "Always have to spoil a little fun with that pesky logic."

His hand came out empty.

"I left my cell charging in the car," he said. "We'll have to use yours."

"It's in my bag on my seat of the car."

"Wait here. I'll go and grab it."

"Be careful," I called to Paul.

"Don't worry about me. This is Connecticut, sweetheart."

Chapter 84

THE NEXT FEW MINUTES went by slowly. A cold wind suddenly blew into the house from the window cut-out. I stared out at the swaying trees that now looked like they belonged on the set of The Blair Witch Project. Ghosts couldn't haunt a new construction, could they?

I checked my watch again. Shouldn't Paul be back by now? How long did it take to get a cell phone out of the car?

I stepped toward the stairs with relief when I finally heard Paul's footsteps. He was standing on the open front-door threshold, holding a powerful flashlight. Had he gotten it from the trunk?

"You get through?" I called down.

The flashlight swung toward my face, blinding me. Then heavy footfalls pounded up the stairs.

"Quit it, Paul," I said. "Not funny."

"Wrong, bitch," a strange voice said. Then a rough hand struck my chest, and I was thrown backward to the floor.

Not funny. And not Paul.

For the next half minute, I was unable to do anything. See, breathe, think, speak, make my heart beat. When I was able to concentrate again, I lifted my hand up and squinted at the face of the shadowed figure who was standing with an unnerving stillness behind the blinding flashlight.

"Who are you?" I said.

"You don't know?" the voice said with disgust. "You actually have to rack your brain to come up with a name? You are one amazing bitch."

The flashlight suddenly shifted up to the man's face. Oh, Jesus.

I muffled a scream – which came out as a groan instead.

My lips began trembling as I recalled his mug shot. Dark, soulless eyes above high, pockmarked cheeks.

I was looking at Mark Ordonez.

The recently deceased Victor's brother!

Where was my gun? was my next thought.

A soft, metallic click sounded beside the light. "You left it in the car, dumbass," the drug dealer said, reading my mind.

"Listen, this isn't the way to handle this," I said quickly. "Trust me, it isn't."

Ordonez answered me by cuffing my arms behind my back.

"Get up!" he snarled.

I stood, feeling strange and powerless. I felt like I was weightless as the drug dealer forced me down the stairs, holding the back of my collar.

"Check this out," Ordonez said as we stepped outside onto the loose dirt of the front yard.

He flashed his light on a form lying beside our car.

The image came to me spottily, as if through TV white snow. It was Paul, faceup, his body almost completely under our car. Blood pooled on the ground beneath his head. He wasn't moving at all.

"Oh, God!" I said, dropping on my knees. "Oh, no! No! Paul!"

My mouth dried instantly as Ordonez yanked me up and dragged me around one of the mounds of earth, and I saw the van. Its side door was slid open wide, an open doorway leading to blackness.

The only sound now was from our feet crunching gravel.

I lost one of my shoes. After I hobbled for a moment, Ordonez stopped, stooped, and yanked off my other one. He heaved it away into the darkness.

"You won't need it," he said. "Trust me on that."

Down the hill behind the van, I watched a window light go on in one of the distant houses. I pictured a family sitting down at a dining room table, kids laying out plates and silverware, Dad loosening his tie. The countless stars above the houses twinkled.

Not for you, I thought, as I was thrown into the van's open doorway.

The cold metal floor slapped against my cheek, and then there was just blackness and the slide-bang of the door shutting. The metallic noise echoed in my ears.

It was the sound of the world slamming its door in my face for good.

Chapter 85

I COULDN'T STOP PICTURING Paul's body lying in the dirt beside his car.

It took me a full ten minutes to stop shivering and to finally recover my ability to speak.

"Where are you taking me?" I said, turning toward the front of the van.

Mark Ordonez was fiddling with a silver gadget on the van's dashboard as he drove. Music suddenly filled the van. Old music with a lot of horns. It sounded absurd under the circumstances.

"You like XM?" he called back to me. "This oldie's 'Fly Me to the Moon.' Frank's Place shit is the mack daddy."

He rolled his neck. With his military-style flattop, he looked like an understated, more disciplined version of his brother, Victor. The only flashy object he wore was his watch, a steel Rolex. Why did he scare me even more than his brother? He had a travel mug in the drink holder by his elbow. He lifted it out and took a sip.

"Where are we going?" I asked again.

"Oh, nowhere," he said. "Got a Piper in an airport across the Connecticut border in Rhode Island. I thought I'd take you on a little night flight. You up for it?"

What was left of my heart sank. I wanted to cry, but to cry was to care too much about myself. The last thing I should do at this point, after all the pain and destruction I had brought to every person I was close to, was worry about myself.

A searing numbness possessed me as I thought about Paul. Dear God, I prayed. Let Paul be okay. I really must have been in shock – like God was taking requests from me at this point.

I lay there, silent, as we rattled along.

"Ah, screw it," Ordonez said, lowering the radio. "I'll tell you where we're going if you let me in on something."

I watched as his cold gray eyes found mine in the rearview mirror.

"So, tell me, why did you and your partner kill my brother, then frame him for murder? He didn't kill that cop. You know it, and so do I. I mean, what the hell? Why?"

I felt a stab of hope as we rolled along. Ordonez thought I had something he wanted. Information about his brother. I had to use that to stall him, get him off balance, create a chance to save myself.

"We got a tip from an informant," I finally said.

"An informant?" he said. "How convenient for you. Snitch have a name?"

"I'm sure they do, only I don't know it," I said. "The tip came through Scott's task force team. Somebody in your organization, I can tell you that for a fact. Give me a chance, and I'll help you find him."

"Wow," Ordonez said. "You're almost as good a liar as Scotty was. He always liked sharp-minded pieces of ass like you, even back in high school."

I craned my neck and stared, wide-eyed, at the rearview mirror.

What did he just say?

"You knew Scott?" I blurted out.

"Scott was my homeboy," the drug dealer said, rolling his eyes. "Back in the day when me and Vic was moving nickel bags, we used to plan fake busts with Scotso. Split our boss's money. I used to tip him off about our competition, money couriers. He used to tip me off about heat coming in my direction."

Ordonez laughed at my shocked expression.

"The night Scott ended up dead, I was supposed to meet him. Only he postponed. Told me he had a booty call from this hot little Homicide detective. Up in Yonkers. You know who that hottie was?"

I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth. I couldn't believe what an idiot I was.

"Yeah, Scott was one slick cat," Ordonez said. "Only, I guess he ran out of lives that night with you. You ever ask yourself what angle he was playing on you? Besides getting in your pants, of course. Because he never did nothing without some twisted reason, believe me. My boy Scotty, he was Freddy Krueger with a badge, more twisted than a pretzel."

We drove in silence after that little bit of wonderfulness.

"You still want me to tell you where we're headed?" Ordonez said after a minute.

I nodded. "Yeah, I do."

"We're going to fly due east of Providence for an hour or so. You know where that will put us?"

I shook my head. "I don't."

Ordonez winked at me in the mirror.

"The Atlantic Ocean," he said. "About a hundred and fifty miles from land. Then – pay attention now, this is good – I'm going to slice open the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet."

My breath started to come in sobbing bursts.

"Don't worry, lady. Nothing life-threatening," Ordonez said. "But then I'm going to slow air speed, lower altitude, and plonk you out the door of the Piper into the deep blue sea. You getting the picture now? You feeling me?"

I suddenly couldn't get enough oxygen. If my hands hadn't been cuffed, I would have covered my ears.

"From that point, you have exactly two choices," he continued as I experienced my first-ever asthma attack. "Drown yourself, or try to survive. You seem like the spunky type. I'm guessing you'll think you're going to get lucky – a passing boat or plane will spot you, pick you up. Only that's not going to happen."

Ordonez took a sip of his drink and adjusted his rearview mirror. He cold-eyed me. Then he winked at me again, horribly.

"While you tread water, your blood will seep. Then the sharks will come, Lauren," he said. "Not one, not two. I'm talking hundreds of sharks. Every hammerhead, blue, sandtiger, maybe even a great white or two, will be all over you like a bum on a bologna sandwich. And then, Lauren – I'm not kidding here, I want you to be fully informed – you're going to experience the worst death imaginable. Alone, in the middle of the ocean, you're going to be eaten alive. In case you've been wondering, I loved my brother, well, like a brother."

Ordonez suddenly turned up the radio, I guess to show his total disdain for me.

What I heard couldn't be, I thought. But it was.

Frank Sinatra.

Oblivious to the irony, Ordonez checked his Rolex and took another sip from his mug.

" 'Just the way you look…,' " he sang along with ol' Blue Eyes, with a jaunty snap of his fingers, " 'tonight.' "

Chapter 86

FOR THE NEXT TEN MINUTES or so, a kind of terror seizure overtook me. I lay facedown on the floor of the van, as still as a corpse in the back of a hearse. Mark Ordonez drove smoothly, keeping it at a steady fifty-five in order not to attract any attention.

From the occasional rumble of passing trucks, I assumed we were on I-84 heading east toward Rhode Island. How much more time until we arrived at the airport? Another hour?

Slowly, I began to come out of my fit. Just in time to realize who, in all of this, I'd hurt most of all. I turned on my side and brought my knees up until my thighs were almost touching my stomach.

Whoever you are, I told the baby in my womb as I shook with sorrow, I'm so sorry. So sorry, so sorry for you, my little one.

There was a hard shake as the van suddenly jogged sharply to the right.

"Hey!" Ordonez shouted, staring into his driver's side mirror as we swerved back again.

"This guy's gotta be drunk. Pick a lane, buddy."

A second jarring shift flipped me over onto my stomach. Immediately after that, there was a loud, crunching bang, and the driver's side wall of the van bent inward. Jesus! What now?

A steady rumbling noise along with a violent vibration suddenly filled the van. I realized that we had driven over the grooved shoulders that are there to keep drivers from falling asleep. The sound was like a bizarre alarm clock going off inside my skull as my forehead did a drumroll on the van floor.

"Son of a bitch!" Ordonez yelled, gunning the accelerator. The van's engine roared, and the rumbling vibration stopped as we whipped to the left, back onto the road.

I slid in the opposite direction and hit the passenger side wall like a forgotten pizza box.

"Hey! It's not a drunk," Ordonez called back to me. "The driver's covered in blood. I don't believe it! How do you like this shit? It's your husband!"

He gunned the accelerator even more then. The engine whined, and the van began to wobble dangerously from too much speed.

"White boy thinks he's a badass, huh? Want to play bumper cars?" the dealer sneered into the driver's side mirror as he floored it.

My stomach dropped when I saw him reach over and click on his shoulder belt. I didn't even have a lap belt to restrain me.

"That's right, you dumb son of a bitch. Catch up, four-eyes! That's it. Now, how do you like…"

There was a sudden shriek of metal and rubber as Ordonez slammed on the brakes.

"… them apples!" he screamed.

For a moment, the only sound was the whisper of me sliding forward toward the passenger seats.

Then the back of the van blew in with an eardrum-ripping bang.

I did a headstand as the van sprang forward, then a belly flop as it dropped back down with a hard bounce. Through my shock and the gap of the now-bent rear double doors, I saw the smoking front of what had been Paul's Camry. At the very top of the accordioned hood, through the shattered windshield, I could see Paul. He was covered with blood, but blinking at least, as he pawed at the deployed airbag in his lap.

I turned toward Ordonez when I heard a loud, metal clack. He showed me my own Glock as he opened the door.

"Don't worry, Lauren," he said. "Our departure is still right on schedule. Be back in a jiff, honey."

As he stepped out of the van, one thought pounded through me like a sledgehammer.

He's going to kill Paul! After all this, Paul is going to die!

Chapter 87

I SCREAMED THEN. One of those wordless, guttural roars that singed my own ears as I scrambled up with my hands still cuffed behind my back.

Headfirst, reckless, without thinking, I propelled myself toward the open driver's side door. I missed the open door by a mile, but I did manage to bang my head a nice lick off the steering wheel before I landed upside down in the driver's footwell. Unbelievable.

The idling engine raced as I thrashed against the gas pedal somewhere behind me. I kicked my legs, trying to get some leverage to push myself outside. My foot was stuck between the steering wheel and the gear shift.

I kept kicking, trying to free myself.

Uh-oh.

The gear slid free with my foot, and suddenly the van was rolling. The van was picking up speed!

Based solely on the sudden sound of car horns and the elongated blast from a semi, I guessed that I was rolling into traffic. I'd managed to sit sideways in the footwell by the time Ordonez arrived in the open doorway at a run and jumped in.

"Where do you think you're going, you crazy bitch?" he yelled. He slapped me across the face before he lifted me up and threw me into the passenger seat, then steered the van back onto the shoulder.

He shut the engine, pulled the emergency brake, and put the keys in his pocket before he stepped outside again.

Then Ordonez raised a finger at me and smiled wickedly.

"Okay, let's try this again," he said. "You stay ri -"

I never got to hear him finish his sentence. Or his word, for that matter.

The truck that removed him and the van door was a car carrier. Loaded to full capacity with Chevy Tahoes and creaking like a trailer park in a tornado. It must have been doing a good seventy-five or eighty.

One second Mark Ordonez was standing there, and the next he was simply gone. Erased, like in a magic trick.

The best one I'd ever seen.

Chapter 88

I SAT THERE, blinking at the van's windshield. The car carrier didn't stop. Didn't even hit its brakes. It was as if the driver hadn't even noticed. A hundred feet or so up the highway, I caught the movement of something sailing end-over-end into the thick roadside brush. Van door or drug dealer, I wasn't sure.

Maybe God had heard my prayers after all. Or heard somebody's prayer for me.

Paul was lying on the ground behind his totaled car. I saw his body as I managed to exit the van. My heart was back in my throat again.

"Paul, I'm here," I said as I ran and knelt down next to him. I prayed he was okay. CPR was going to be a stretch with my hands cuffed behind my back.

"Lauren," he said. His teeth started chattering. "I saw the taillights leaving, and I -"

"Don't talk," I said.

The blood seemed to be coming mostly from the back of Paul's head, where the drug creep had hit him, probably several times. My breath caught as the words subdural hematoma flashed from my mental Homicide detective Rolodex. I usually saw it on coroner's reports under cause of death. It seemed like a miracle that Paul was conscious, that either one of us was alive, really.

"Stay still," I whispered in his ear. "Don't move."

Cars whipped past us on the highway as I sat down in the broken glass beside my husband. Blue and red lights started to bubble in the distance. Paul's blood was warm on my legs.

"You saved me, Paul," I whispered as two state troopers' cars zipped out of the traffic and screeched to a stop in front of us.

Again, I thought, but didn't say. You saved me again.

Chapter 89

"MILK AND SUGAR OKAY?" Trooper Harrington said as she came toward me across the UConn Health Center ER waiting room.

Ever since she and the other statie, Trooper Walker, had seen my badge, they had gone above and beyond. Instead of waiting for an ambulance, they laid Paul down in the back of Harrington's cruiser and only asked questions as we headed for the nearest hospital at about 110. Trooper Harrington even loaned me a pair of sneakers from her workout bag in the trunk to put on over my bare and cut-up feet.

"How's your baby and your husband?" she wanted to know.

"The ultrasound showed everything was fine," I said. "But Paul has a concussion and needed stitches. They want to keep him overnight for observation. The doctor thinks he's going to be okay, thank God. Thanks to you and your partner."

"Can't say the same about that Ordonez fella," the female trooper said with a shake of her head. "I radioed back to the scene. They found him in the weeds a couple of hundred feet up the road. It was a car carrier that hit him. They said he looks like one of those pennies after you leave it on a railroad track. That's the downside of looking for trouble, isn't it? Sometimes you manage to find a little more than you bargained for.

"Hey, important thing is, you came out on top. You and your husband and your baby. Your family is safe. What else is there?"

I looked into the state trooper's caring face. Her pulled-back blonde hair, her scrubbed cheeks, her alert blue-gray eyes brimming with competence. She was maybe one or two years out of the academy. Had I been that earnest once upon a time? I guess I had been. A million years ago, it felt like. And on another planet. I envied her, admired her, too.

"So, what's NYC Homicide like?" she said. There was a starstruck glow in her eyes. "What's it really like? Not like Law and Order, I hope."

"Don't listen to a word she says" came a booming voice from behind us. "She lies like a rug."

I turned around toward a smiling face I hadn't seen in a while. In way too long, I decided.

It was my partner, Mike.

"What are you doing here?" I said.

"One of these Connecticut Chip wannabes called Keane, and he called me," Mike said as he squeezed my hand. "I came straightaway. The brother came for you, huh? Unbelievable. What a trip. Guess he shoulda stuck to the friendly skies instead of our nation's highways, huh? They pulled him out from underneath a semi or something like that? Nice work, Lauren. That's the best news I've heard all day."

I nodded my head. Then I finally started crying. I had treated Mike like the enemy, and now here he was, holding my hand, supporting me as always.

"I'm sorry, Mike," I said. "I'm…"

"Going to buy me a late dinner?" Mike said, linking our elbows as he stood me up. "Okay, if you insist."

We found an all-night diner just up the street from the hospital.

"So, what's new, Lauren?" Mike said as we sat. He was back on with the cop humor.

I sipped my coffee in the awkward silence between us. The joe was scalding and bitter. A lot like what I now had to admit.

Mike winked at me.

"C'mon, Lauren. I killed an Ordonez," he said in a low voice. "Now you've killed an Ordonez. If you can't talk to me, who else is there?"

I told him everything. Staring into my coffee cup, I recited the whole story. What I knew. When I knew it. Every sordid twist and every tawdry turn.

Mike took a last, loud sip of his Diet Coke and looked out at the passing headlights.

"You know what, Lauren?" he said after a while.

I shook my head.

"Call me screwed up, but even after hearing all that, I'm pretty much glad about what's happened. Maybe they didn't kill Scott, but let's face it, those two Ordonez brethren were an ugly strain of bacteria. And if what brother Mark said was true about Scott being involved with them, then, hell, maybe even he had it coming. The Lord," Mike said, "He sure do work in mysterious ways."

Chapter 90

I LISTENED TO THE clattering plates in the diner. Something was sizzling on a grill. On the TV behind the register, a reporter was cackling like an idiot as he was buffeted by the high winds of a Florida storm.

"That's why I'm quitting," my partner suddenly said. "My little brother owns a bar in San Juan. He invited me down. I already put my papers in. I'm cashing in all the vacation I've been saving, so today was my last day. I'm out."

"But…"

"But what, Lauren?" Mike said. "I've put my time in, and you know what? It didn't work out, so screw it. If you make a mistake at a factory and someone gets hurt, what's the worst thing that can happen? You'll lose your job? In our job, you make a mistake, chances are you're losing your job and going to jail. For what? Fifty grand a year? We're not even allowed to go on strike. Please. You know how many dead people I've dealt with? How many grieving mothers? Not worth it. I'm over. What's that song, Lauren? 'Even walls fall down.' "

I started weeping again then, really crying my eyes out.

"Yeah," I managed to say. "And I'm the one holding the sledgehammer."

Mike wiped the tears off my cheek with his thumb.

"Bullshit," he said. "Me pulling that trigger had nothing to do with you."

I stared at him.

"Nothing?" I said.

"Well," he said, pinching his thumb and first finger together. "Maybe a teensy-weensy bit."

I punched him in his arm.

"But I forgive you, Lauren," he said. "We're partners. But when it comes down to doing the right thing for your family, well, things get hairy quick, don't they? Who am I to judge? No one. Not anymore. That's why I'm out. Though I do regret one thing."

"What's that?" I said.

"Not being there to see the million-megawatt grin slide off that slick Jeff Buslik's face when you blackmailed him. I always knew you were an ass kicker, but Christ. You go right for the jugular when you have to."

"Or lower," I said, wiping at my red eyes. "Whatever the situation calls for."

Mike lifted the ketchup bottle and made the sign of the cross at me with it.

"You are now forgiven for your sins, my child. Go forth unto the Earth and sin no more," he said, standing. "I mean it, Lauren. You're a good person. Don't ever forget that."

"I'll try not to, Mike."

He gave me a kiss on my forehead before he stood.

"And if you ever make your way down to San Juan, you look me up. Ex-partners, even ones involved in super-crazy shit like you, get hooked up with margaritas all night long."

Chapter 91

I WAS COMING OUT of the shower Monday morning of the following week when I found Paul waiting for me. He held my morning coffee in one hand and my fluffy bathrobe in the other. "What service," I said, beaming a smile at him. "I almost can't stand it. Almost."

"Least I could do, considering what a big day this is," he said, planting a kiss on my dripping nose.

It was a big day, I thought as I was royally assisted into my robe. I took a sip of the coffee and wiped the steam off the mirror with my sleeve and looked at myself.

My first day back to work.

And the last of my career.

I'd decided to take my partner Mike's lead. I was going to hand in my resignation today, finally get out. It would be a change for me, I knew. It was going to be incredibly hard to get used to not being a cop.

But given what had happened over the past several weeks, I had to admit that it was high time for me to make the move.

Twenty minutes later, my face and badge polished, Paul gave me another kiss at the garage door.

He was dressed for work as well, looking great, handsome as ever. His concussion, like the doctors had thought, had only been minor, thank God. Except for twenty or so stitches at the back of his head, he was as good as new.

He, too, was wrapping things up at work. It was all arranged now. We'd gotten the paperwork from the relocation company on Friday. Both closings were set. Paul's new Connecticut job and our new Connecticut lives would start in six weeks.

If we could get through the next eight hours.

Not exactly a sure thing, considering our recent history. I crossed my fingers as I raised my travel mug to his.

"The family that quits the rat race together…," I said.

"Stays together," Paul said as the clink of stainless steel echoed off the walls of the garage.

Chapter 92

I CAUGHT LIEUTENANT KEANE in his office when I came into the squad room. He only looked up from his Post sudoku puzzle after I closed his door.

Then his sharp blue eyes scanned my face. Suddenly, he slapped his paper and pen onto his desk.

"Please," he said. "Not you, too. Don't tell me you're leaving. You can't. How does that make sense, Lauren? We lose one cop, and now two more are gone?"

"It's not like that, LT. You're reading this wrong."

"Please. Do I look stupid? If it's IAB you're worried about, I have hooks and -"

"I'm pregnant, Pete," I said.

Keane stared at me as if I'd shot a round into the ceiling. He rubbed at his eyes with his fingertips. Finally, reluctantly, he smiled. Then he stood and walked around his desk and gave me a fatherly hug. The first, I believe, he'd ever given me. Probably the last, too.

"Well, young lady, even though I don't remember giving you permission to get pregnant, congratulations to you and Paul. I'm happy for you both."

"I appreciate it, boss man."

"You had some trouble, too, if I remember. Ann and I did, too – before the twins. That's just terrific for you guys. You have to be ecstatic. I'm sickened by the fact you're completely screwing me by leaving, but I'll get used to it, I suppose. I'm sure as hell going to miss you. I guess going out and tying one on is out of the question. How can we celebrate? How about some breakfast?"

My boss ordered in from the precinct's local bodega, and we sat for half the morning, telling old stories as we ate scrambled egg quesadillas and drank coffee.

"Hey, if I'd known it was going to be this much fun," I said, wiping hot sauce off my cheek, "I would have retired years ago."

Keane's desk phone rang as we were finishing our coffee.

"Yeah?" he called into it.

"That's weird. That's very strange. Okay, send her up, I guess."

"Send up who?" I asked, an edge creeping into my voice.

"The witness in Scott's case. What's her name? The old schoolmarm?"

My heart and stomach did a simultaneous stutter step.

Amelia Phelps!

What now?

"What does she want?" I asked.

Keane pointed his sharp chin out at the rail of the squad room stairs, where Amelia Phelps was standing.

"You can start your two weeks' notice by finding out. Go talk to her."

I got right up and walked out to see what was up.

"Yes, Mrs. – I mean, Ms. Phelps," I said, leading her to my desk. "What can I do for you today?"

"I was expecting to get a call to come in and look at a lineup," she said, removing her white gloves as she sat. "But no one ever got in touch, so I thought I'd stop by and ask if I can be of any assistance."

I let out a long breath of relief. Mike must have forgotten to let her know we wouldn't need her after all.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Phelps, I should have called you. It turns out we apprehended the suspect, so we no longer need your help. It was so good of you to come in, though. Can I give you a ride somewhere? Back to your house maybe? It wouldn't be any trouble."

I usually wasn't in the business of chauffeuring witnesses, but Ms. Phelps was elderly. And besides, she was the last conceivable wrinkle in the whole ordeal. The sooner I got her out of there, the better.

"Oh, okay," she said. "That would be very nice, Detective. I've never actually ridden in a police car before. Thank you."

"Believe me," I said, steering her toward the exit. "It's no problem at all."

Chapter 93

THE REST OF THE DAY I spent on the phone with personnel. On hold with personnel was more like it as I attempted to hash out the bureaucratic details of my resignation.

Periodically, my fellow squaddies came by to register their surprise and well wishes. They even insisted I head out with them around four to The Sportsmen, the precinct's local gin mill, for a farewell drink.

Though my bladder came dangerously close to the bursting point at the bar – with Diet Cokes, of course – I was deeply touched by my co-workers' concern and respect.

They even gave me one of those corny, oversize greeting cards with what had to be the entire precinct's signatures.

See ya, it said on the front.

And on the inside, Wouldn't wanna be ya.

Who knew Hallmark had an NYC Cop Attitude section?

"Oh, guys," I said with a sniffle. "I'm going to miss you, too. And I wouldn't want to be ya either."

It was around seven when I finally begged out of there and headed for home.

That's funny, I thought, as I pulled into my driveway. I didn't see Paul's car. He usually called to let me know when he had to work late.

I was opening the call file on my cell to ring him, when I noticed something kind of strange in the den window over the garage.

There was a dark gap in the slats of the blinds. As I scrolled down for Paul's cell number, I tried to remember the last time I'd opened them.

I looked back up, slowly, very deliberately, then shut my cell phone with a click.

The gap in the blinds had closed.

Wait a second, I thought. Hold on.

My mind raced as I thought of the possibilities. Could this be more friends of the Ordonezes? Maybe there was another brother I didn't know about?

Or maybe you're just tired and paranoid, I thought. Maybe one too many Diet Cokes at The Sportsmen.

I pulled out my Glock and put it in the belt of my skirt at the back.

Most definitely a little skittish, I thought. But better paranoid than sorry.

Chapter 94

I TOOK OUT MY KEYS as I came up the stairs, acting as naturally as I could. When I was out of sight of the den window, I drew my gun and ran around to the back of my house.

I glanced at the windows. Everything seemed intact. No sign of a break-in. No trouble so far.

There was a small gap in the curtains at the back door. I peered through it, watching the front-to-back hallway for a while. No movement. Nothing.

After a few minutes, I began to feel silly. There was nobody there but me.

Then, at the end of the hall near the door, something suddenly crossed through the dark hall. A large shadow moving quickly. I was sure of it.

Shit! I thought as my pulse pounded. Christ! I could feel my heartbeat in the fillings of my teeth.

That's when I thought of Paul. Maybe he actually was home. And there was somebody in there with him. Running around in the dark. Who? For what possible reason?

I had to go inside, I decided with a deep breath.

I slipped off my shoes and, with painstaking quiet, unlocked the back door and turned the knob, as slowly as I could.

"Shh," I heard somebody say. Not me.

I was lifting my Glock toward the sound, ready to squeeze off a shot, when the lights went on.

"SURPRISE!" said a couple of dozen voices in unison.

I'll say! Jesus God, it was my friends and family. The female ones, at least. By some miracle, I didn't fire a round. Thank goodness for safe-action pistols.

I gaped at the Mylar balloons, the green-and-yellow-wrapped presents, the three-wheel yuppie jogging stroller parked in the corner.

It wasn't a home invasion after all. Not bad news or tragedy.

It was my baby shower!

And judging by the number of hands that shot up over open-mouthed, blood-drained faces, I guessed it had been a real surprise all around.

I lowered my sights from between my elderly Aunt Lucy's eyes. She started breathing again.

"Look, Mommy," my sister Michele's four-year-old daughter said in the dead silence. "Auntie Lauren has a gun."

"It's all right, ladies," Paul said, smiling as he hurried forward and helped me to reholster my weapon. He gave me a hug to help me recover.

"Why did you plan the shower for now? I'm only eleven weeks," I whispered as he kissed me on the cheek.

"I wanted to make sure you got a shower before the move," Paul said, turning back toward the crowd. "Now, smile. Big smile. Enjoy your party.

"It's all right," Paul repeated. "Just another day in the life of a hero cop. Thank God we have a fresh supply of diapers, huh? Who needs a drink?"

Chapter 95

THE SHOWER WAS A BIG SUCCESS – happy times for all, but especially for me. I had such good friends, and even my relatives were mostly nice. Life was finally starting to make some sense again. And then -

"Hey, stranger!" Bonnie Clesnik said, dropping her menu and almost knocking the table over as she hugged me in the middle of the Mott Street Dragon Flower the Sunday after the baby shower.

I looked around at the overly bright restaurant. There were cloudy-looking fish tanks everywhere. When my old CSU sergeant friend Bonnie called me to come out with her, I was thinking pub grub, home fries, a couple of Virgin Marys maybe.

I blinked as I picked up the menu and saw the picture of a turtle and a frog. Wow. Sunday brunch in Chinatown. I guess Bonnie had never had morning sickness herself.

"I can't believe I missed your retirement party and your shower," Bonnie said as we sat. "Someone on third shift called in sick, and wouldn't you know it? I got the call."

"Save the regrets, Bonnie," I said, smiling. "It's me here. This is great. Perfect." As long as I can keep the Chinese food down.

"So," Bonnie said midway through the dim sum. "All of a sudden, it's so many changes for you. I would have thought they'd have to pry you off The Job with a hammer and a crowbar. I'm so happy for you and Paul, of course, but… I don't know. I've seen how you work cases, Lauren. The glow in your eyes. How fearless you can be. I'm not the only woman cop you've inspired, either, by the way. I guess it's hard for me to see you turn it all down and walk away. Somehow, I can't see you as a soccer mom."

Gee, Bonnie. Thanks for the vote of confidence, I thought. Wasn't this supposed to be a celebration? Let the good times flow?

Suddenly, Bonnie laid down her chopsticks.

"Before I forget," she said. "I have a gift."

Bonnie removed a large manila envelope from her bag and handed it to me. I opened the flap.

"Just what I've always wanted," I said, looking at the pages and then staring at my friend quizzically. "A computer printout."

What was going on now?

"I received that on Friday from the FBI lab," Bonnie said. She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and looked into my eyes with kind concern. "It's the results from the DNA sample I found on the tarp Scott Thayer was found wrapped in."

The world whited out for a second as a sudden heat flash sizzled through me.

Our goddamned Neat Sheet! I actually remembered the picnic where Paul had provided his DNA sample!

It was our first anniversary. Paul had brought me and two bottles of champagne up to the exquisitely beautiful Rockwood Hall Park in North Tarrytown. Had it ever gotten better for us? I doubted it. Late summer. Champagne and crickets, and just the two of us. It was the first time we'd actually tried to get pregnant.

I glanced at the pages, then back at my friend.

"What are you talking about?" I asked Bonnie. "I thought that you said all you could find was Scott's blood."

"After I scraped it off, I noticed that there was another, older stain. It turns out it was dried semen. Just enough to get a DNA signature."

I squinted at the pages. What would it take for Scott's case to stay closed? I wondered. Holy water? Pounding a stake through its heart? Shooting it with a silver bullet?

And what the hell was I supposed to say now? Bonnie seemed to be waiting for something from me.

"Why didn't you tell me about this before?" I finally got up the courage to ask.

"I tried to," Bonnie said. "But it was the morning of the Ordonez shooting, and I couldn't reach you. When I called your lieutenant the next day, he told me to shit-can it. They'd found Scott's gun on Victor Ordonez, and the case was a slam-dunk."

"So what's the problem?" I said.

Bonnie let out a sigh.

"What can I tell you, kid? The DNA isn't from Ordonez. And yeah, I'm sure."

I ran through the implications at the speed of light. They had Paul's DNA! That would be devastating for him, for both of us. And baby makes three.

"Whose is it?" I said carefully.

"We don't know," Bonnie answered.

Thank God for small mercies, I thought.

But unfortunately Bonnie wasn't done.

"But we did get a cold hit from another crime scene," she said. "How about that?"

What?! How about I shoot myself here in the Dragon Flower?

A vague and sickening dread hit the center of my chest like a punch.

"Run that by me again," I said to Bonnie.

"The Feds' CODIS database collects DNA samples from crime scenes across the country in order to ID perpetrators. It turns out, the same DNA from the semen on the blanket in your case was found at another crime scene – an armed robbery in Washington, DC. Happened nearly five years ago. The case was never closed."

The dread that had been operating in my stomach suddenly shifted its strategy for attack and caught me in a hammerlock around the throat. I was having trouble thinking, even sitting in an upright position.

No. It couldn't be. What Bonnie was saying meant that…

Paul had been involved in another crime? An armed robbery?

Chapter 96

THE WAITER CAME and Bonnie paid. Then she reached across the table and patted my shaking hands.

"I didn't mean to drop all of this on you at once, Lauren," Bonnie said. "I was as shocked as you are."

Want to bet? I thought, dropping my eyes to the table.

"An armed robbery in DC?" I whispered through the cotton that had suddenly materialized in my mouth. "You're sure about it, Bonnie?"

"The brief abstract they sent with the positive match said the DNA came from a blood sample found at an armed robbery in a DC hotel. But the case wasn't solved, and it's still open. The match means that we have anonymous secretions at two different crime scenes. Semen on the blanket used to cover Thayer. And blood in some DC hotel room."

What did that mean? Obviously, they still didn't know it was Paul's. As if that mattered, I thought, dropping my pulverized head into my hands. As if anything did at this point.

Bonnie kept talking but I barely heard what she was saying. All I could do was blink and nod. The impossible had just happened. For the first time in a while, I had actually managed to stop caring about Scott's case. I had a new distraction.

Almost five years ago Paul had committed some kind of armed robbery in a hotel room? My brain labored over that thought, then promptly went on strike.

Because that was impossible.

But DNA doesn't lie.

When I looked up, I found Bonnie staring at me, waiting for some kind of comment.

"So what does this mean?" I said, as if I didn't know the answer. "Victor Ordonez didn't kill Scott Thayer?"

Bonnie looked out the window onto crowded Mott Street. There was pain in her eyes.

"I don't know. How could I, Lauren? Maybe he just borrowed the blanket off a friend, but it definitely throws some doubt out there, doesn't it?" she said. "The kind of doubt a defense lawyer would have a field day with. Not to mention the press jackals."

I looked at the neon Chinese characters in the restaurant window. A black eel in the aquarium beside our booth batted his head against the glass as if trying to get my attention and say something. Hey, Lauren. Why don't you just run screaming out of the restaurant? Don't stop till you get to Bellevue.

Bonnie straightened the papers against the tabletop, pushed them back into the envelope, and stuffed the whole thing down into my bag.

"But I decided it's the kind of doubt this city, this department, Scott's wife, and most especially you, Lauren, don't need thrown out there."

She gestured toward my handbag.

"That's why I'm giving it to you, honey. This case was screwed for everyone involved from the word go. This is my retirement present to you. The DC detective's name and contact info are somewhere in those sheets, if you ever want to pursue it on your own. Or you can chuck it off the Brooklyn Bridge. Your choice."

Bonnie planted a big kiss on my forehead as she stood up at our table.

"One thing I've learned as a cop is that you do what you can. It's not our fault that sometimes that's not enough. Lauren, you're my friend, and I love you, and it's up to you. See you around."

Chapter 97

IT WAS A FEW HOURS LATER, and dark, when I found myself standing in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan.

Manhattan , my father used to say before we'd start his thrice-weekly walks from this very park. The greatest treadmill in the world.

His postretirement exercise routine consisted of riding the subway here to the last stop, walking over to Broadway, and seeing how many of Manhattan 's thirteen concrete miles he could cover before he got tired and hopped on an uptown subway headed back home. All through law school, I'd go with him if I had the chance. Listen to him talk about the crimes and arrests that occurred at the countless intersections. It was on one of those walks with Dad that I decided I wanted to be a cop rather than a lawyer. Wanted to be just like my father.

And it was right here, at the beginning of one of those walks, all alone, that he died of a heart attack. As if he'd have it no other way than to pass on the streets of the city he served and loved.

I rested the FBI report against the rusted railing before me as I listened to the dark waves slap against the concrete pier.

Just when I'd completed the toughest puzzle ever, Dad, I thought.

I'd been handed an extra piece.

Story of my life recently.

"What do I do, Pop?" I whispered as tears fell down my cheeks. "I don't know what to do."

There were exactly two options, I knew.

I could toss away Bonnie's gift, like I had the rest of the evidence, and head to my new life in Connecticut, a blissful soccer-mom-to-be.

Or I could slap myself out of my denial and figure out what the hell was going on with my life, and with my mysterious husband.

I held the envelope over the railing.

This was an easy one, right?

All I had to do was release my fingers and it would be over.

I would go to the train and head north, where safety, my husband, and my new life waited.

A gust of wind picked up off the water, flapping the envelope in my hand.

Let it go, I thought. Let it go, let it go.

But, finally, I dug my nails into the envelope and clutched it to my chest.

I couldn't. I needed to get to the bottom of this, no matter how hard, how ugly, it got. Even after everything I had pulled, all the craziness, all the hurting my friends and covering things up, I guess there was still some scrap of detective left in me. Maybe more than a scrap.

I closed my eyes tightly. Somewhere in the darkness of the park behind me, I sensed an old man stretching his legs, limbering up for a walk. As I turned around quickly to find a taxi, out of the corner of my eye I felt a figure nodding in my direction, a smile on his face.

Chapter 98

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT the next morning when the barista at the Starbucks across from Paul's Pearl Street office building raised an eyebrow at me in surprise.

Jeez, I thought. You'd think she'd never seen a disheveled, emotionally demolished woman ask for the entire top shelf of the pastry case before.

After last night's Battery Park epiphany, I'd called Paul and told him that Bonnie wanted me to stay over in the city for old time's sake. Then I'd wandered up Broadway, like the homeless person I now was, until about midnight.

I'd made it all the way to The Midtown, just south of the Ed Sullivan Theater, when my legs quit on me.

I had just enough strength to toss the questionable orange-speckled bedspread into the corner of my three-hundred-dollar-a-night closet before I passed out. Pretty pricey, but Paul could afford it.

I woke up at 7 a.m., left the hotel without showering, and caught a taxi on Seventh Avenue, heading downtown to the financial district.

For the first time in a month, I had a game plan. I knew exactly what I had to do.

Interrogate Paul.

I didn't care what it took. I'd be both good cop and bad cop. I was tempted to bring the hotel phone book along in case I had to beat the truth out of him. One thing was certain. Paul was going to tell me what the hell was going on if it was the last thing he ever did.

And based on the way I was feeling as I stood in the Starbucks across from his office, that was a distinct possibility.

"Anything else?" the barista asked, pushing my five-figure-calorie breakfast across the counter.

"You don't have anything else," I told her.

In an oversize purple velvet wing chair positioned by the window, I read the FBI report, cover to cover.

I stared at the autoradiographs – the DNA vertical barcodes – for both crime scenes until my vision blurred.

There was no mistake, no denying what the pages said. I didn't have to know what variable number tandem repeat meant or what the heck an STR locus was to see that the two samples were one and the same.

I put the report down, and with one eye on the revolving doors of Paul's black-glass office building across the narrow street, I commenced a world-record round of compulsive eating. Hey, alcohol and nicotine were out. What's a very pissed-off, pregnant cop supposed to do?

I was licking chocolate icing off my fingers fifteen minutes later when, through the scrum of business suits and power ties, I spotted the sandy head of a man Paul's height turning into the office building. Good-looking guy, no denying it. That was one constant about my husband. Maybe the only one.

I knocked back the last of an espresso brownie, slowly brushed myself off, and grabbed the latte-stained FBI report.

Come out with your hands up, Paul, I thought as I crossed the still-shadowy canyon of Pearl Street. Your pissed-off, pregnant wife has a gun in her handbag.

But as I stood in line behind a FedEx guy at the security desk, I noticed something odd.

Paul was in the open door of one of the elevators.

Here we go again, I thought.

Unlike the rest of the invading, pin-striped financial army, he was making his way out, like a salmon swimming upstream, a lone salmon.

Whatever, I thought, taking a quick step toward him through the crowd. This saves me an elevator trip.

But as I got closer, I noticed the carry-on strapped across his chest. And the shopping bag in his hand.

The blue Tiffany shopping bag.

I stopped dead-still, and stayed silent as I watched him head toward the doorway.

Chapter 99

CARRY-ON? TIFFANY BAG? Where was Paul going? What the hell was happening now? Did I really want to know?

Yes! I needed to find out, I decided, as I watched him flag a taxi.

His cab was pulling out when I whistled and caught the next one pulling in.

"At the risk of sounding clichéd," I told the orange-turbaned driver. "Follow that cab."

So we did. Up to Midtown Manhattan. Then through the Midtown Tunnel onto the Long Island Expressway.

When our cabs reached the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I called Paul's cell.

"Hey, Paul. What's up?" I said when he answered after a couple of ring-a-dings.

"Lauren," Paul said. "How was your sleepover?" I could actually see him through the rear window of the taxi in front of me, holding his cell to his ear.

"Terrific," I said. "Listen, Paul. I'm bored out of my mind. I was thinking of heading down to see you for lunch today. What do you say? That be okay?"

Here it is, Paul. Your moment of truth.

"Can't, babe," Paul said. "You know Mondays are impossible. We got six earnings reports coming in that have to be crunched and recrunched. I can see my boss from my desk right now. He's knocking back beta-blockers with his venti. If I get out of here by eight tonight, I'll be lucky. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you, promise. How are you feeling?"

The green sign we were speeding under said " LaGuardia Airport." I had to hold my hand over the mouthpiece on my cell in order to muffle a sob.

"Just fine, Paul," I said after a second. "Don't worry about me. See you tonight." If not sooner, babe!

At the airport, I had to flash my badge and NYPD ID in order to get past the security checkpoint without a ticket. Then I stayed well back in the torrent of people as I followed Paul down the departures concourse, past the regiments of newsstands and gift shops and open bars.

He stopped suddenly, about a hundred feet ahead of me. He sat down at Gate 32.

Keeping my distance by a bank of pay phones, I felt like an ulcer exploded open in my stomach when I saw his destination.

Washington , DC .

Chapter 100

IT COST ME $175 to snag a last-minute seat on Paul's flight. What was I saying? It cost Paul $175. Excellent.

Watching from a restaurant across the departure concourse, I literally flinched as Paul was checking in for the business-class boarding call.

That was because the attendant at the counter did something more than a little odd after he handed Paul his ticket stub.

He punched Paul's fist playfully – as if they were old pals! What was that all about?

I snatched a discarded newspaper from the boarding area to shield my face as I passed through the front cabin, but I needn't have bothered. A glance showed me that he was engrossed in conversation with the man on his right – another frequent flier, I supposed.

If there was a good thing to say about my second-to-last, back-row seat in coach, it was that there was no way for Paul and me to bump into each other during the flight. Oh, and it had a handy barf bag. One that I made use of promptly after takeoff.

Pregnancy and motion sickness and watching your world go up in apocalyptic flames – really bad combination.

"Sorry," I said to my thoroughly disturbed female executive neighbor, who was on the phone. "Baby on the way. Morning has broken."

The really tricky part came when we landed in Washington. Paul, along with the rest of the corporate-class dweebs, got off first. So I really had to hightail it out to the arrival gate in order to see which way he'd gone.

But by the time I'd made it to the taxi line on the street, there was no sign of him.

Damn it, damn it, damn it! What a waste this whole trip down here had been.

I was doubling back, heading up the escalator, when I saw him coming out of the men's room. He'd changed into jeans and a nice blue sweater – and he wasn't wearing his glasses anymore.

What kept me from screaming his name right then and there, I don't know. His ass was so busted it was unreal.

Instead, I just double-timed it back down the stairs and continued to trail my deceitful husband.

I needed to know firsthand just how deep he'd sunk the blade into my back.

Paul went directly past the taxi line through the sliding glass doors into the street. The doors were closing when I saw him do something that made me stop in my tracks and just stare.

He opened the passenger door of a shiny black Range Rover that was idling at the curb.

I decided to run then.

By the time I'd made it ten feet outside, the sleek luxury SUV was already moving, tires shrieking as it cut off a minibus and shot into the left lane.

My eyes strained to get the license plate number as I ran across the exhaust-stained pavement after it.

It was a DC plate starting with 99.

I gave up on the rest of the plate number and tried to get a quick look at the driver. I wanted to see who, or more specifically what gender, the person was who had just picked up my husband.

But the windows were tinted. I discovered that little fact about the same moment that I tripped over a golf bag and gave the hallowed ground of our nation's capital an enthusiastic, chest-bumping high-five.

Chapter 101

NOT EXACTLY SURE where to start looking for Paul, I decided to pay Roger Zampella, the contact detective listed in the FBI report, a visit.

I'd never met Roger face-to-face, of course. He turned out to be a large, well-dressed African American with a smile brighter than the polished buckles of his polka-dot suspenders.

When I called him from the airport, he'd immediately invited me over to his squad room at the Metro DC Second District Station on Idaho Avenue. I arrived to catch him just beginning an early lunch at his desk.

"You don't mind if I eat while we talk, do you, Detective?" he said, flipping his silk pink-and-green repp tie over his shoulder. He tucked a napkin into the white collar of his two-tone baby blue banker's shirt before upending a brown lunch bag onto his desk with a flourish.

A small apple slid out, along with a Quaker oatmeal bar about the size of a used bar of soap.

He cleared his throat.

"My wife," he explained as he tore open the bar's wrapper with his teeth, "just saw the results of my latest cholesterol test. I got an F-minus. You said on the phone you wanted to talk to me about a robbery? I should have told you, I'm in Homicide now."

"It's actually from nearly five years ago," I said. "I was wondering if you could recall anything about it. The case number was three-seven-three-four-five. An armed robbery at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the capital. The perpetrator -"

"Left some blood," Detective Zampella said without any hesitation. "The ticket-broker thing. I remember it."

"You have a good memory," I said.

"You never forget the open ones, unfortunately," he said.

"You said something about a ticket broker?"

Zampella sniffed at the oatmeal bar before he took a dainty squirrel nibble.

"The Sheraton, this is the one out near Reagan National Airport, was hosting the annual NCAA football coaches' convention," he said as he chewed. "All the big schools' coaches and assistant coaches receive Final Four tickets every year for free. These ticket brokers – glorified ticket scalpers, if you want my opinion – just set up shop in the hotel and buy them up. Pay out cash right there and then. Illegal, of course, but we're talking about college recruiters. They've been known to bend a few rules."

"How much cash are we talking about here, Roger?"

"A lot," Zampella said. "Some of the games go for a thousand bucks a ticket."

"And there was a robbery?"

Zampella went to take another little bite, decided to hell with it, and dropped the whole thing into his mouth. He chewed twice, swallowed, then cleared his throat.

"One of these brokers apparently came down a couple of nights before the convention," he said. "And somebody must have gotten wind of who he was, and they robbed him of his suitcase of cash."

"Get a description?" I said. "Anything at all?"

Zampella shook his head.

"Guy wore a ski mask."

A ski mask? Wow, Paul was really original. Not to mention completely insane.

"Where'd the blood come from? Anybody figure that out?"

"When the broker was handing over the case, he had second thoughts and hit the thief in the chin with it. Guy was a bleeder, I guess. Ruined the carpet."

"What did the thief do then?"

"He took out a gun, threatened to blow the guy away. That's when the broker gave it up."

"How much did he get?"

"Half a million, maybe more. The broker said it was only seven thousand, but that's because he didn't want to get in trouble with the IRS, or maybe the Mob. This guy was a major ticket guy."

"Suspects?" I said.

"There was no hit on the blood. We interviewed several guests on the broker's floor. There were, like, two thousand people at the conference that night. We weren't going to set the world on fire for some slick, probably Mobbed-up asshole ticket broker who was tripping over himself to lie to us. We went by the book and, you know how it is, moved on to the next thing, forgot all about it. Until now, that is. What are you doing? Gathering new material for a revival of Unsolved Mysteries?"

"It's actually personal," I told the detective. "A friend of mine, a jeweler, was pistol-whipped and robbed in a Midtown Manhattan hotel last month. I remembered seeing the abstract on your case when I looked into it. You wouldn't happen to have a copy of the hotel register, would you?"

"I did put one in the file," Zampella said, checking his watch. "But it's been – what? Five years? God knows where they buried it."

"I know I'm being a pain in the neck," I said. "But do you think you could make a couple of calls and track it down for me? After I take you out for lunch, of course. DC has a Morton's, doesn't it?"

Zampella glanced at his scrawny apple. Then he reached for his pin-striped suit jacket on the back of his chair.

"As a matter of fact," he said, standing up. "There's one right here in Arlington."

Chapter 102

TWO HOURS AND TWO FILET MIGNONS with home fries later, we were back in Zampella's office, and I was going over the very hotel register I needed to see so urgently.

Zampella thought he had heart trouble? When I glanced at the top of the second page, I could have used a defibrillator and a shot of epinephrine.

There it was in black and white – Paul Stillwell.

Something inside me swayed dangerously. Even after all the evidence, I was hoping for some eleventh-hour reprieve. Yet here was the opposite. More and more proof of Paul's – what? Lunacy? Secret life?

I couldn't believe it. Paul had actually robbed a sports ticket broker of half a million dollars?

And I'd thought finding out secret stuff about Scott Thayer was devastating. What the hell was wrong with men? Were they all legally insane?

No, I answered myself. Not all of them. Just the ones who had the misfortune to make my acquaintance. Or the other way around.

I thought about the Range Rover and the Tiffany bag and the fact that Paul didn't wear glasses down here in DC.

I turned to Zampella, half snoozing behind his desk. He'd had a martini with his steak.

"You think you could do me just one more favor, Roger? Just one, and I'm gone."

"Shoot," he said.

"I'm looking for an owner's list of 2007 Range Rovers. DC plates starting with ninety-nine."

"More Unsolved Mysteries material, huh? All right, you got it. But fraternal order of police cooperation aside, this has to be the last one. My lieutenant is due back from a department conference any second. There's a bookstore right down the block. Why don't you catch up on some reading, and I'll see you in about an hour."

It was more like half an hour. I was sitting in front of the magazine rack, paging through a Vanity Fair, when Zampella tapped me on the shoulder.

"I think you dropped something, miss," he said, handing me an envelope with a wink before heading off toward the exit.

I ripped the sheet of paper out of the envelope. The list was twenty-one vehicles long. I traced my finger down the owner's column, looking for Stillwell.

No dice. I did it again more slowly. Again nothing.

I rubbed my overcaffeinated, tired eyes. What the hell? It was worth a shot.

I went into the bookstore's café, sat down, and pulled out the hotel guest list. One by one, I cross-referenced each Range Rover owner with the hotel list. It was maybe fifteen minutes later, pins and needles tingling my butt, when I found a match.

Veronica Boyd. 221 Riggs Place.

Veronica? I thought, seething. I knew it! A woman! Paul, you goddamned bastard!

I jumped out of my seat and bolted for the front door. I needed to rent a car. And maybe do some surveillance work.

It was time to find out exactly what – oh, and most especially who – Paul had done.

Chapter 103

THE HOUSE WAS A QUAINT attached brick residence on a low-key, but definitely upscale street in a neighborhood north of Dupont Circle. The rainbow flags outside the coffee bars and the restaurants housed in its old stately buildings reminded me a lot of Greenwich Village, the more yuppified parts, anyway.

From my rented Ford Taurus parked at the corner, I kept my eyes locked on the gleaming black door of 221 Riggs Place.

A quick scan of the block didn't reveal any black Range Rovers among the several other brands of luxury vehicles parked along both sides of the narrow, tree-lined street.

Well, what do you know? I thought, squinting at the shutter-lined upper windows of the house. In his secret life Paul seemed to be doing darn well for himself.

But was it his house? I truly didn't want it to be. If I ever wanted to be completely wrong about something, it was this.

Let there be some explanation, Paul. Something I can stomach.

I was about to take a spin for a restroom break an hour later, when the front door finally opened. None other than Paul came down the brick stoop of the town house, carrying the blue Tiffany bag.

He pressed the key fob in his hand, and the headlights of a hunter green convertible Jaguar on the far corner glowed with a double bloop.

That really wasn't fair, I thought, sublimating the urge to plow the rented car broadside into the Jaguar. Why couldn't we have the Jag in our dimension?

Next up, I tailed Paul through the afternoon traffic. We made a turn onto 14th Street and passed a bunch of lettered side streets, S Street, R. I followed Paul left onto Q Street, then right onto 13th Street and around the rotary to O Street. I watched as he pulled into the parking lot of an ivy-covered brick building.

The Chamblis School, said a brass sign on its wall. This couldn't be good. Not a chance in hell that this was the happy ending I was looking for.

I parked at a hydrant, feeling like I was in a trance as I watched Paul get out of the Jag, carrying the Tiffany bag.

So, Veronica Boyd was a teacher? I could just about picture her. Preppy and little and blonde. Not to mention young. And very attractive, of course.

Was that what this was all about? I thought, starting to fume in the car. Out with the old, in with the new?

I watched Paul return to the Jag three minutes later.

What in the world?

She was young, all right.

A three- or four-year-old girl wearing a plaid jumper threw her arms around Paul's neck. He closed his eyes as he hugged her and then opened the bag. The little girl removed a white teddy bear wearing a silver necklace and kissed it.

Paul lifted her up under her arms and carefully put her and the teddy bear into the car.

I was still sitting, immobilized, when Paul maneuvered the purring Jag around the wagons, SUVs, and Hummers of the other parents picking up their kids. When he stopped at the corner, I got a good look at the girl through the back window.

My lungs quit. No inhaling. No exhaling.

I recognized that pin-straight nose, those blue eyes, that sandy hair. The girl was as beautiful as Paul was handsome. She'd gotten all of his looks.

I couldn't believe it, absolutely couldn't. The pain was unreal, impossible to imagine without actually experiencing it, open-heart surgery without anesthesia.

Things were a thousand times worse than I'd ever thought they could be. Paul had pulled off the cruelest trick possible.

A baby, I thought.

Paul had had a baby.

Without me.

Chapter 104

I ARRIVED BACK at 221 Riggs Place just in time to see Paul coming back out of the house with his little girl, and a Dora the Explorer bike complete with training wheels. I nodded ironically as he popped the smiling child onto it and headed the bicycle south down the sidewalk.

Off to the playground, no doubt. I always knew Paul would make an excellent father.

When they were out of sight, I emerged from the Taurus and headed for the stoop. Just one more thing to do here, I thought as I climbed the stairs mechanically and rang the doorbell. One final detail to take care of.

I just needed to core out the very last remnants of my heart.

"Yes?" said the woman who opened the door.

She was blonde, all right, but not preppy. And not little. At least not her chest. I guessed she was about my age, which, honestly, didn't help one bit. I scrutinized her heavy-handed makeup, the way her tight black skirt cut into her tummy. She looked like she'd recently put on weight.

An attractive woman desperately battling the onslaught of her late thirties. Welcome to the club.

I stared into her dark brown eyes under the razor streaks of blonde, an off-putting clash of light and dark. When I smelled her perfume, something cold drew across my stomach. Like a razor.

"Veronica?" I finally spoke.

"Yes," she said again. I noticed she had an accent, Texan maybe, definitely southern.

I took out my badge.

"I'm Detective Stillwell," I said. "May I please have a word with you?"

"What's this about?" she said tensely, not budging from the doorway. I couldn't tell if she knew me or just didn't like badges.

I took out the DMV printout I'd gotten from Zampella.

"Do you have a 2007 black Range Rover?" I asked the blonde woman. Paul's other wife?

"Yes," she said. "What about it?"

"I'm investigating a hit-and-run accident. May I come in? It will only take a moment."

"Why does a New York City detective want to investigate a hit-and-run accident in Washington, DC?" she asked, keeping herself wedged in the doorway.

I already had an answer for that. "I'm sorry. I should have explained. My mother came down three days ago with her church group. She was the victim. If there's some sort of problem, I could always just go ahead and have your vehicle impounded."

"Come in," she said, stepping to the side. "This has to be some kind of mistake."

There was an off-white pub mirror and a cute espresso-stained mail desk in the front foyer. The design was contemporary, moderately tasteful. The rooms were sunny and cozy.

She led me into the kitchen, where she'd opted for retro appliances. A pink mixer sat on the butcher-block island next to a bag of flour. She was cooking dinner for Paul? Sweet girl.

"My daughter Caroline's fourth birthday is today, and I have to make a Dora the Explorer cake or the world will end," Veronica said, staring into my eyes.

The world has ended, I felt like saying as I looked away.

"Coffee?" she asked.

"That would be fine," I said. "Thank you."

She opened and closed a cupboard over the sink. I stood there light-headed, fighting to stay on my feet. What the heck was I doing here? What was I trying to get out of this?

Down the hallway, I spotted a vanity wall, photographs on floating shelves.

"May I use your bathroom?" I asked.

"Down the hall to your right."

The walls of the hall seemed to collapse in on me as I saw Paul in one of the photos. He was on a sunny beach with Veronica and the baby, who was maybe one at the time. Surf spraying, the sand like powdered sugar. The next shot – to my heart – was of the two of them, Mommy and Daddy, their cheeks together in midlaugh, red-eyed with city lights twinkling behind them.

The third photograph hit me like a serrated blade between my eyes. A half-naked Veronica in an open nightgown, Paul resting his chin on her shoulder as he cupped her ripe, pregnant belly in his hands.

By the time I got to the fourth, and final, photo, a thousand-megaton blast in my skull had mushroomed. Paul, you bastard.

Veronica's breath was suddenly at my back.

"You're not here to ask about some car accident," she announced.

I stared at their wedding photo for another moment, dry-eyed. It had been taken on the same beach as the first photograph. A minister was there. White flowers in Veronica's blonde hair. Paul in an open-throated, white silk shirt. Smiling. Beaming, actually.

She wisely jumped out of my way as I stumbled toward the front door.

Chapter 105

IT HAD ALL BEEN FOR NOTHING! Not just everything that had happened in the past month – my entire marriage.

That thought hummed like high-voltage electricity through my head as I drifted in the direction Paul had gone with the little girl, Caroline.

All my covering up. Gutting my friendships. Blowing my police career to smithereens. I had actually blackmailed the district attorney, hadn't I?

I covered my mouth with my hands.

I had nothing left, did I?

I made the corner. Across the busy street was some kind of park.

I looked out at a trio of street musicians and a group of old men playing chess under the trees. Other people were strolling along the path or lounging around a big white fountain. Everything was dappled with sunlight, like in that famous Renoir in all the art books.

As I came past the fountain, I spotted Paul pushing his daughter on a swing. He helped Caroline down and guided her to the sandbox as I arrived at the chain-link fence. The two of them seemed to love each other very much.

I walked around to the other end of the playground and was a few feet behind the bench Paul was sitting on when the four-year-old came running over to him.

"Daddy, Daddy!" she said.

"Yes, love?" Paul said.

"Can I have a drink?"

Paul reached into the basket of the bicycle and fished out a juice pack. I felt it in my stomach when he poked the straw through the foil. Then he knelt down and gave her another hug.

Even from behind, I could sense the joy radiating off Paul as he walked his little girl back to the swings.

"Is this seat taken?" I said as he came back to his bench.

Chapter 106

AT FIRST PAUL FROZE.

Then spasms of shock, fear, concern, and sorrow crossed his face. For a second, I thought he was going to bolt and start booking for the park exit.

Instead, he suddenly sagged down on the bench and put his head between his knees.

"Where do you want me to start?" he finally said quietly as he rubbed his temples.

"Let's see," I said, tapping my finger against my lower lip. "There are so many choices. How about the first time you cheated on me? Maybe the time you robbed a ticket broker at the Sheraton? Or no, no, no. The day you secretly got married. Wait, I've got it. My favorite. Tell me about the time you had a baby without me!"

Scalding tears ran down the sides of my face.

"I was barren and you needed to have a kid? Was that it? 'Sorry, Lauren, you sterile waste of life. I need to be fruitful and multiply with some other woman behind your back'?"

"That wasn't it," Paul said, looking at me, then out at his daughter. "She was an accident."

"You think that matters in the slightest?" I said, my face raw with anger.

Paul wiped at his eyes and looked at me.

"Just give me a second," he said, standing. "Then I'll tell you. I want to tell you everything."

"How considerate," I said.

Paul rolled the bike over to where the nannies were gathered. He spoke to one of them and then returned without the bike.

"Imelda works for the people next door. She'll take Caroline back. Why don't we walk and talk. I knew this had to happen someday."

I shook my head. "I didn't."

Chapter 107

"IT WAS ALMOST FIVE YEARS AGO," Paul said as we took the strolling path at the park's perimeter.

"I picked the short straw on that bullshit analyst's-convention thing in DC, remember? I was pissed off. Things weren't going real well between me and you and… Anyway, I was in the lounge at the Sheraton, nice room, piano bar, trying to drink away the memory of yet another ludicrous meeting, when this loud, drunken moron storms in and demands that the Patriots game be put on."

"I want to hear about your secret family, Paul. Not some stupid hotel bar story," I spat.

"I'm getting there," Paul said. "Every time there's a first down, this character has another shot of orange brandy. In the middle of the fourth quarter, he downs his eighth or ninth shot and proceeds to throw up all over the bar.

"I'm talking projectile action! As the bartender tosses him out, I look over and Veronica, who was standing on the other side of the guy, is staring at me, wide-eyed as I am. And I said, 'Let's just be glad he didn't stay for the postgame celebration.' That's how we met."

"Wow, that's sweet and kind of funny," I said with a sneer. "You really had your groove on that night, huh?"

Paul looked at me.

"I can argue or I can explain. Not both."

"Or get shot in the testicles," I said. "You left that one out."

"Shall I continue, Lauren?" he asked.

"If you please would," I said. "I can't wait to hear the rest of this riveting tale."

"So, basically, she invites me to have a drink with her. It was innocent, I swear. I wasn't trying to do anything. I don't expect you to believe that, but it's the truth. After a couple of more drinks, we're just sitting there, talking, telling our life stories, and this stocky guy walks in.

"Veronica keeps staring at him, and then she says that she knows him. Turns out, Veronica used to be a Tampa Bay Buccaneers cheerleader."

"Football?" I said, tilting my head. "That's funny. Considering the basketballs under her shirt, I was leaning more toward the NBA."

"She used to go out with one of the Tampa Bay assistant coaches," Paul continued, "and she said she remembered the guy at the bar buying Super Bowl tickets from her old boyfriend. She tells me the stocky guy is some kind of bigwig shady ticket broker. She points to the briefcase the guy is carrying and says it's probably full of hundred-dollar bills. We drink some more and talk about what we would do with that kind of money. Finally, Veronica stands up to go."

Paul stopped walking and peered at me.

"You sure you want to hear this?"

"You want to protect my feelings now?" I said. "Of course I want to hear the punch line."

Paul nodded as if pained.

" 'I dare you,' she whispers in my ear. 'I'm in two-oh-six.' And off she goes.

"So, I sit and drink. Three scotches later, I see this stocky guy get up, carrying his briefcase. I let him leave. But then I find myself on my feet, following him. Just as a joke, I kept telling myself. No way I'm going to rob anybody. But I follow him to his room.

"Then, I don't know what got into me. I was wasted, upset, alone, and excited all at once. A couple of minutes later, I knock on the guy's door, and when he opens it, I'm punching him in the face."

Paul and I both stepped out of the way as a bike messenger zipped between us.

"Wait a second," I said. "The report said you had a gun."

Paul shook his head.

"No, we just fought. He must have made that up in order to make himself look better. He was strong. He bloodied my nose with a shot, but I was too scared to lose. I just teed off on him until he went down. Then I grabbed the briefcase, and I ran."

"To two-oh-six?" I said.

"To two-oh-six," Paul said with a grim nod.

Chapter 108

I STUMBLED ALONG the path like the sole survivor of a terrorist bombing. I remembered where we were in our marriage at the time. Not a good place. It was after we'd learned we couldn't become parents. A year of having sex like it was a science experiment. Paul having to humiliate himself with plastic cups in specialist after specialist's bathrooms. All for nothing.

We'd turned on each other then. We didn't announce it, but I could see it now, vividly. That was what had happened back then.

I decided that I couldn't care less.

I suddenly stopped short and slapped Paul. Hard! As hard as I could!

"Keep going?" he said as he rubbed his jaw.

"Good guess," I said.

"I wake up the next morning, and at first I have no idea where I am or what's happened the night before. On the desk are two neatly divided piles of hundred-dollar bills. Veronica is sitting there in a bathrobe, pouring coffee. Fifteen minutes later, I'm walking out of her room with a gym bag full of four hundred thousand dollars."

I shook my head. I was actually asleep, wasn't I? Dreaming this.

No, I realized. I was tripping. Somewhere along the course of this bizarre day, I'd been drugged. I rubbed my eyes. Paul goes off on a business trip and pulls off a heist?

I asked the next logical question. "What did you do with the money?"

"Caymans," Paul said. "A buddy of mine on the trading desk was going down there. He set it up for me. If there's a good side to this, it's that. Four-plus years of extremely aggressive investing later, we're looking at a little over one point-two million."

I tried to let that rather large sum sink in. I was experiencing major difficulties, though.

Paul continued, "Three months after I stole the money, I get a call that puts ice in my blood. It's Veronica. She tells me she's pregnant. At first I'm insane. I tell her I want a paternity test, I want to talk to my lawyer, but she says to calm down, she's not going to boil any rabbits. She just wanted to be nice. She thought I should know that I had a daughter coming into the world. Whatever I wanted to do was up to me.

"So I debated and didn't do anything for a long time, but eventually I went down to meet Caroline. One thing led to another, and well… One day a week, I take the shuttle down here and become Daddy."

"For the past four years?" I said. "Work knows about this?"

Paul shook his head.

"I just telecommute."

"What about Veronica? You want me to believe you're not still screwing her?"

"It's true," Paul said.

A second later, I found myself screeching with my hands around his throat. "Bullshit! You married her!" I screamed. "I saw the pictures in the hall!"

Paul pulled my hands off him.

"No, no, no!" he said, holding his hands out before himself protectively as he backed away. "That was all for Caroline's sake. We wanted her to think she has a regular daddy like everybody else. We had a photographer take some pictures. That's all. She thinks I'm a pilot."

My eyes felt like they were filled with acid, burning deep into the sockets.

"And who does Veronica think you are?"

Paul shrugged. "She knows who I am," he said.

"That makes her in the minority, Paul, don't you think?" I said. "Does she know about me?"

"From the start."

"You fucker!" I said. I was insane with rage. I felt like biting him. "Do you know who you are? Because I don't. Is your new job a bullshit story, too?"

"No, that's actually real," Paul said, suddenly sitting down on an empty bench.

"Let's face it, Lauren," he said after a little while. "When you and I found out we couldn't have children, our marriage started sliding badly. We both were feeling hurt, screwed up. Then you got promoted to Bronx Homicide, Lauren, and that was all she wrote. Turnaround after turnaround. Double, triple shifts. Don't get me wrong, I didn't blame you. I just never saw much of you. I really didn't think there was a chance in hell of us getting back together.

"But things are so different now, Lauren. You're pregnant. It was like somebody hit a 'pause' button, then remembered the two of us after four years and just hit 'play' again. Caroline is in my heart, but I'd be willing to give up even her for you. There's an actual 'us' again, a future. I'm ready to do anything for that."

Paul gripped my hand.

"I've always just wanted us. You know that. From the first time I set eyes on you. We can work it out, Lauren. This… shit – It's just a stupid, horrible detour. All the lies are over now."

"That sounds really sweet, Paul," I said, pulling my hand away. "Really wonderful and nice, except for one thing. One small detail."

He looked at me quizzically. Now it was my turn to hurt him. Let's see how he liked getting his heart napalmed.

"You left something out. Something really important, Paul. The cop I watched you kill. I was there when you killed Scott, dumbass."

Chapter 109

PAUL'S FACE SEEMED TO CRUMBLE in front of me. "You were where?" he asked.

"At Scott's place in Riverdale," I told him. "You must have read our e-mails, but guess what? You were too late. He'd just been with me, Paul. Right before you cracked his skull open, we'd been in bed together. Turnabout is fair play, no? So how does it feel?"

Apparently not too good. Paul's mouth was gaping wider than The Scream's. "So you were… How did…," he stammered.

"That's right, Paul," I said. "Surprise, surprise."

I grabbed his wrist, squeezed with all my might.

"Who the hell do you think has been keeping you out of jail all this time? Your fairy godmother? I covered things up for you, destroyed my career – everything I was – in order to keep you out of prison. I actually felt sorry for you. Can you imagine that?"

Paul put his hand out toward my face. I slapped it down.

Other strollers started making a wide berth around us.

"And come to think of it," I snarled. "How dare you kill Scott when you knew you were being unfaithful to me? Who the hell are you? Thief. Murderer. Bigamist. What am I missing?"

I slapped him again, and it felt so good.

"Scott had a wife and three kids!"

Paul broke my grip, then walked away. He stood along the other side of the path so that I wouldn't hit him again, I assumed. After a while, he did something astounding. He started laughing.

"You want to let me in on the joke?" I said, red-faced, walking toward him. "I could use a real rib-tickler right around now."

Paul turned to me.

"Sure," he said. "Here's the punch line: I didn't kill Scott because he was sleeping with you. I had no idea about that, Lauren."

He folded his arms across his chest and gave me another smile. I didn't get it, not a word he was saying.

"I killed him because he was blackmailing me," said Paul.

Chapter 110

NOW IT WAS MY TURN to put my head down between my knees.

"Blackmailing you?" I asked.

Paul nodded.

"A year ago, Veronica came up to New York. She has a friend who's a model or something who gets her work. Eleven o'clock in the morning, she finds herself in the middle of a drug raid, and I get this frantic call at work to go and try to help her out.

"I walk into this apartment down in SoHo, expecting a million cops, but there's only one. Scott Thayer. I'd gotten there too late, though, because Veronica got scared and told him we had money. He takes me into the kitchen and tells me he's a reasonable guy. He'll let everybody go free for ten grand cash."

I felt a sharp pain in my neck. My skin felt clammy.

"So I gave it to him," Paul said. "A month goes by. One day I'm coming back to my desk after lunch, and Thayer's sitting at it, holding a picture of you. He tells me that you two work out of the same precinct house, and for another twenty grand, not only will he not turn me in – nice guy that he is – he won't tell you about Veronica."

Paul looked at me. I stared back at him, my mouth gaping.

"So I give him that. It was when he came back the third time that I realized it would never end. He wanted fifty thousand. Instead of giving it to him, I decided I'd rather take a shot at wrapping things up my own way."

I listened to flute music from somewhere in the park. It sounded like a dirge at my own funeral.

I'd thought Paul had fought for me. That his killing Scott had been about me. But it was over money, blackmail.

"You understand that Thayer wasn't content to keep on blackmailing me," Paul continued. "He wanted all of it. He came after you to get another hook into me. That's all he wanted with you, Lauren."

"So you killed him, Paul?" I said bitterly. "You're a gangster now? Robbing people and shooting cops. Maybe you should cut a rap album."

Paul squinted down at the ground, then shrugged. "Things just kind of kept on happening. One thing led to another."

A scintilla of compassion rose inside me. The same thing had happened to me, hadn't it? I pushed the sympathy away as quickly as I could. The last thing I would do was feel sorry for Paul.

"Listen, Lauren," Paul said. "Why don't we call it the mother of all midlife crises? I'll do whatever you want now. Give the money back. Or we can just go. We'll drive to Reagan International straight from here. A million point-two dollars tax free is a lot of money. Why don't we just go and spend it? Raise our kid on a sailboat. You're mad now, but you betrayed me, too, remember? Let's just… go. C'mon, Lauren. We can do this together."

Chapter 111

I SAT THERE, staring at my incredible con man of a husband. What an amazing liar he was. Then I dropped my eyes to the pavement, my shoulders slumping. The world seemed to slow suddenly, the music in the air, the sound of traffic.

It was official. I had given Paul everything that I possibly could. My love, my work, my reputation. And now I had absolutely zero left.

I was still sitting there, agonizing, when Paul's daughter appeared again. The nanny Paul had spoken to stood waiting a few feet away with another toddler and Caroline's bike.

"Daddy!" she said. "Pictures! I want to show Imelda the pictures."

"Not now, love," Paul called to the girl. "Later, sweetheart."

"But they're my brothers," the girl said, pulling a black-and-white photograph out of Paul's jacket before he could stop her. It fell to the ground as he tried to snatch it back.

"You're mean, Daddy," the four-year-old said with a pout. "I want Imelda to see the picture of my new twin brothers."

My eyes strained in their sockets. What!

Paul stared down at the small, square photograph, his Adam's apple bobbing.

"Show her later, Caroline," Paul snapped. Imelda took one look at him before quickly grabbing Caroline's hand and pulling her away.

I bent and lifted the precious picture off the pavement. I nodded once, twice.

It showed a sonogram. Two fetuses. Twins. I pictured Veronica again. Of course she looked like she'd recently put on weight. She was pregnant!

I looked at Paul's face, almost with fascination. He'd lied so effortlessly to me. Again and again.

He would never stop, I realized. There was something deeply, incredibly wrong with Paul. He would say anything, do anything. How could anyone tell lies like this? How could anyone do the awful things he'd done? Even the way he'd just snarled at his little girl. I'd protected a monster.

"I know exactly what we're going to do now," I said, letting the black-and-white picture fall to the cobblestones. "What I should have done when this whole thing started."

I whisked out my cuffs and snapped them onto his wrists. "Paul, you're under arrest."

Chapter 112

NANNIES, CHESS PLAYERS, AND JOGGERS were outright gaping as I dragged a handcuffed Paul out of the park. Of course they looked at us. Good God, he was twice my size.

"You sure this is the right thing to do, Lauren?" he whined as I perp-walked him two long blocks back toward my Taurus.

"A million dollars? You still love me or you wouldn't have covered for me. Which isn't going to go well for you, either. You'll get charged as an accessory to murder. The baby will be born behind bars. You're not really thinking this through."

"Unfortunately for you, Paul, I'm tired of thinking," I said. "Thinking is what got me into this mess. I'm just doing what's right. Trying to, anyway."

I stopped suddenly as we passed Paul's parallel-parked Jaguar. "Where are the keys, Paul? Let's end it in style. Give me a taste of that million dollars. Maybe I'll change my mind and drive to the airport."

I jabbed Paul in the small of his back. "But don't bet on it."

I took the keys from his jacket pocket and then pushed Paul into the passenger seat. I went around to the other side. I was sliding the key into the ignition, when Paul popped open the glove compartment.

A second later, I felt something hard sticking under my right armpit.

"Time to cut all the bullshit, Lauren," Paul said, digging a small revolver into my ribs.

Idiot! I thought. Of course, he had a gun. The ticket broker hadn't lied about that. Paul had.

"Hey, I thought you said you didn't have a gun," I said.

"You still haven't picked up on the theme here, Lauren?" Paul said. "I tell you only what you need to hear. Now get the cuffs off me. Right now!"

"Then what? You're going to shoot me?" I said as I did what he asked. I didn't have a choice. "Might as well, Paul. You've done everything else to me."

"Hey, you're the one who started this game. Slapping cuffs on me," Paul said.

"That's what you think this is, don't you?" I said. "Some kind of game? News flash, Paul. You killed a man. You're a mur-der-er."

Paul's face scrunched in rage. He turned bright red, his eyes glittering with fury.

"News flash? Let me tell you something. You know what it's like to have a wife with bigger balls than you? While you were out kicking ass, I was busy downtown kissing asses, so you could have nice things. But that's JUST NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU!!!"

Paul pistol-whipped the dashboard savagely, then pressed the gun barrel to my temple.

"You want to know how I felt when Veronica made me that offer at the Sheraton? For the first time, I felt like a man! I got a chance to step away from this namby-pamby investment firm, law degree, 401(k) bullshit I've been wasting my whole life on."

Paul took a deep breath, then released it. The gun stayed at my temple.

"I did it, Lauren," he whispered fiercely. "I took what I wanted, and then I went and got my prize. Let me tell you something. I remember every second of it. And Lauren, it was good. Veronica licked the blood off my knuckles. I knocked her up like a stud bull."

"Anything you say, psychopath," I said.

"And you're right. I killed that prick Scott. He thought he could just keep messing with me. You should have seen the look on his face when he turned around. He was outmanned, and he knew it. I gave your boyfriend exactly what was coming to him. I could give two shits about his wife and kids."

In the distance, sirens sounded. Somebody must have called the police about the scene Paul and I were making. Thank God for cell phones!

"You hear that?" I said. "Sirens? That's the sound of truth and consequences catching up with you, Paul."

"Nothing is catching up with me, cupcake," Paul said, opening the door and shoving me out. "Time for a trial separation."

The Jag's tires smoked as he peeled out onto Riggs.

I stood between the skid marks, disoriented. Could somebody please tell me what the hell had just happened? The past few hours seemed impossible, surreal. What was I thinking, hours. Try the past few minutes.

My hair flew back in the wake of two siren-wailing DC police cars that appeared in full-speed pursuit of Paul.

This was it? I thought. This was how it would end?

Half a block north across the street, I spotted my rental car.

Not if I could help it, I thought, taking out the keys as I ran.

Chapter 113

MINUTES LATER, I was pinning the gas, tailgating the rear DC cop car that was chasing Paul. I felt like giving him my brights. Gangway! NYPD coming through! Paul is mine. Get in line! That's my cheating, lying, murdering husband trying to get away.

We careened through another ritzy neighborhood. Were we in Georgetown? Ivy-covered brick and Greek revivals blurred past my windshield. Where did Paul think he was going? Did he still believe he could get away with this?

I figured it all out when I spotted the tower of the bridge back to the airport. It loomed a half mile away, above some slate roofs on my left.

I whipped a left at the next corner, ran a red light, and screeched a right onto M Street, speeding toward the bridge to cut him off if I could.

I honked as I skidded to a stop – dead center at the entrance to the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Then I jumped out of the car and stood in the open doorway.

"Get your crazy ass out of the street!" an angry bus driver screamed at me as he leaned on his horn. "What in the green world of God do you think you're doing?"

You think I know? I felt like telling him. But I didn't have the energy or the time.

A block to the north, Paul was approaching with the DC cops close behind. When he reached the traffic I'd just backed up, he drove the Jaguar up on the sidewalk. No hesitation. A hot dog cart and newspaper box sailed off the Jaguar's grill before Paul bulleted into the intersection.

I jumped to the left of my Taurus, filling the only space that might fit Paul's car. The bus driver screamed as the Jag sped toward me. I was the only thing standing between Paul and the bridge.

I stood there transfixed.

Paul would stop.

He wouldn't run me down.

He couldn't kill me.

The car kept coming, though. Really fast.

At the last second, I dove to the right.

The Jag blew past me like a hunter green guided missile. Twisting around on my back, I watched Paul slalom around my car and back onto the bridge road. Son of a bitch was going to make it. He would have run me down – no problem at all.

But then his right back wheel caught the curb with a savage pop, and the car went airborne.

An amazing sight.

There was a deafening crunch, a sound like a giant plastic bottle being fed into a recycling machine, as the Jaguar collided with a concrete bridge abutment.

Glass hung in the air like dust motes as the Jag accordioned. Then the ruined car flipped end over end, snapping through riverside trees before exploding into the muddy green water of the Potomac.

Chapter 114

THE JAGUAR HAD DISAPPEARED – and Paul with it.

I tripped on a partially buried shopping cart as I half ran, half fell down the embankment. Now what? Well, I did an awkward triple lutz before I belly flopped painfully into the river. Then I kicked my way straight down, scanning the murky water for the Jag and Paul.

I don't know why I was being so brave, foolish – whatever this ought to be called. Maybe because it was the right thing to do.

I was about to go back up for more air when I spotted a shard of twisted metal. I swam toward it.

No!

It was the Jag. Paul was still belted into his seat behind the deployed air bag.

His eyes were closed, his face stitched with bleeding cuts. How long had he been in the water? When did brain damage start? I thought, yanking open the car door.

I leaned across Paul, struggling desperately against the air bag to undo his shoulder belt. The damn thing wouldn't open.

Then I felt his hands bite into my neck.

What was he doing?

My throat was already burning. I couldn't believe this. I guess I was the one with the brain damage! Here I was, trying to save him – and he wanted to kill me at the bottom of the Potomac. Paul really was crazy.

River water burned my nasal cavity as I struggled. Very soon I would be out of strength and oxygen. Then what? That was simple – I would drown.

I kept fighting against him, but that wasn't working. Paul was too big, too strong. I had to go another way. And fast!

I pushed hard against the windshield. Then I shot my elbow back, catching Paul in the throat. Then I did it again!

The pressure on my neck let up as an air bubble the size of Rhode Island blobbed out of Paul's mouth. I ducked from beneath his arms. I felt myself starting to pass out, though.

Paul grabbed my foot as I struggled to turn away from him. He was still stuck in the car, his open eyes bulging. He was going to take me with him, if it was the last thing he did, which it would be.

I kicked forward against the water, then straight back into his nose. I broke it for sure. Blood blossomed around his face. Then his grip let free, and I kicked myself away from the car, up toward the light.

I looked back and could see Paul's face below. He was bleeding, and he seemed to be screaming. Then he was gone.

I broke the surface and gorged myself on blessed air as the strong river current pulled me along. Up on a bridge I floated under, there were spinning police lights and dozens of staring faces. The riverside trees swayed in a police helicopter's rotor wash.

A fireman shouted and tossed me a life preserver. I grabbed it and held on for dear life.

Chapter 115

THE DC COPS TOOK real good care of me after that. They had checked our flight list, assumed Paul and I were on vacation and that he had simply snapped.

I didn't say anything to change their mind. In fact, after I ID'd the body, I didn't say anything at all.

An hour later, my buddy Detective Zampella himself arrived at the scene and managed to squash the story with the local media. Then Zampella got me the hell out of there.

I needed to chill somewhere. But not in DC.

I didn't want to fly, so I got in my rental and drove all the way to Baltimore before the urge to rest came over me again.

I remembered staying at a nice Sheraton near the inner harbor one time, and I found the hotel on Charles Street.

The Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel. Never has any hotel looked better to me.

I got a room with a water view, instead of one overlooking Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Not that I really cared right now.

The room was all blues and creams and it was definitely what I needed, because I was the ultimate frazzled traveler.

The bed was sweet, just terrific, and I spent the rest of the evening motionless, almost comatose, staring up at the ceiling. As the numbness started to wear off, I felt sad, angry, anxious, ashamed, and helpless all at once. Finally, I slept.

The next time I looked up, it was still dark. I stared at the walls of the strange room, not remembering where I was at first. It all came back to me as I glanced out the window and saw the lit-up harbor. A big boat called The Chesapeake. Baltimore – the Sheraton Inner Harbor.

Then other images came.

Paul. Veronica. Little blonde Caroline.

The Jaguar in the Potomac.

I lay in the dark and thought it all through from the beginning. What I had done. How I felt about it now. How I felt about myself. I pinched my eyes shut. Vivid sensations and memories flashed through me periodically. The smell of Scott's cologne. The taste of rain in his kiss. The feel of the rain on my shins as I stared at his battered body. Paul in the Jaguar at the end.

My breath caught at what I remembered next.

I saw silver-white light streaming through the windows of the church where Paul and I were married. My left hand twitched as I felt the slide of a gold ring.

The despair that overtook me then was like a seizure. I felt like it was something that had always been in me. Some dark blossom that had been waiting to bloom since the day I was married.

For the next two hours I did nothing but cry.

Eventually I found a phone and ordered a sandwich and beer from the Orioles Grille in the hotel. I turned on the TV. On the eleven o'clock news there was a lurid shot of the bridge in DC where the accident occurred, and of Paul's car being lifted from the river.

I was about to cry again, but I stopped myself with deep, hard breaths. Enough of that for now. I shook my head at the screen as the news anchor called it a tragic accident.

"You don't know the half of it," I said. "You have no idea what you're talking about, mister. No idea."