BLUES ALLEY APARTMENTS
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Anne LeRoy stepped from the elevator and strode down the hall, key in hand, backpack slung over one shoulder, and utterly exhausted and disheartened. Maybe Peggy had been right. Maybe quitting had not been the smartest thing to do in the current economy. LeRoy unlocked the dead bolt, and then the lock embedded in the handle while Matilda mewed from behind the door.
“I’m coming. I’m coming,” she said.
She pushed in, using her foot to keep her orange-and-white tabby from darting down the hall. Inside, she dropped her backpack on the carpet. Matilda weaved in and out of her legs as she crossed the small living area to the even smaller kitchen—more of a nook. As LeRoy pulled open the refrigerator Matilda jumped up onto the bar counter. Neither had many options; LeRoy had the choice of milk or the last can of Fresca. Matilda’s choices were better, chicken and rice or salmon and rice. She chose the salmon for Matilda and the Fresca for herself. Something was wrong when the cat was eating better than the owner. But after another day of failed interviews, that didn’t look like it was about to change anytime soon.
After feeding Matilda, LeRoy took the Fresca to the living room, popped open the can, and drank in gulps. The effervescence shot a beeline to her nose, and she grimaced while allowing the sensation to pass. Too bad the Fresca wasn’t something stronger. Three job interviews, three polite handshakes, and three dismissive remarks like “Thank you for coming in.”
Another day like today and she’d have to move. That was the least of her problems. She wasn’t exactly wedded to her tiny apartment, and living in Georgetown hadn’t exactly suited her budget when she was working for the PSA. On her current salary, which was zero, it would be even less manageable. She could tap into her trust fund, but living with the guilt of having done so would be worse than moving. She had sworn to her grandmother she would not use the funds unless absolutely necessary. She wondered if eating was an absolute necessity.
LeRoy placed the soda can on the counter and walked to the shelving unit in the corner of the living area opposite the couch and weathered coffee table she had inherited from her college roommate, who had moved back home to Nebraska and didn’t want to pay to ship it. The shelves held a small television, a couple of potted plants, paperbacks, and tiny speakers. LeRoy plugged her iPod into the speakers and hit the ON button. The band Coldplay had barely sung its first lyric when Mrs. Garibaldi banged on the adjoining wall.
“All right, Mrs. Garibaldi,” she shouted as she lowered the volume, adding under her breath, “you old bitch.”
LeRoy walked to her bedroom to change. “Bedroom” was never a more fitting name for a room, given that her queen-size bed was the only thing that fit in the space. She had to put her dresser in the closet.
She traded her interview suit, a traditional blue jacket and matching skirt—hemline below the knee—for sweatpants and a sweatshirt, and tossed her white blouse in the bathroom sink, filling the bowl with cold water and a squirt of Woolite. Dry cleaning was not in the budget for a while.
After filling the sink and soaking the shirt, she turned on the hot water in the combo shower and tub, shut the drain, and poured a capful of the bubble bath powder under the splash. She owed herself this much. As the room filled with a fragrant aroma, LeRoy retrieved her latest novel from her backpack and also found the newspaper article Peggy Seeley had given her at dinner the night before. LeRoy sat on the edge of the bed, reconsidering the photograph of the good-looking attorney. “Why couldn’t you live in Virginia? You are GU,” she said, meaning geographically undesirable. “Not to mention too old. What would Grandma say if I brought you home?”
As she reread the article, LeRoy experienced the same sense of dread that had been haunting her for two days. She just couldn’t shake the thought that there was more to Albert Payne’s pulling the plug on her report than a lack of funding. What were the odds of him killing her project and shortly thereafter two children dying from the very hazard LeRoy had been investigating? It just couldn’t be coincidence, no matter what Peggy Seeley thought. Payne would not be pressing so hard to get back the report unless there was something else going on, and that realization had made LeRoy a wreck. She spent the last two days looking over her shoulder, certain that people were following her.
Reading further than she had the night before, LeRoy learned that Sloane had recently been in the news himself when his wife was murdered in their home.
LeRoy stood. “Oh my God.”
She flipped to the jump on an inside page and bit her fingernail as she continued reading. Sloane had been wounded in the attack but survived, and police had no leads on a suspect. Feeling sick to her stomach, LeRoy paced her apartment, taking deep breaths and telling herself to calm down. “Don’t let your imagination run wild.”
She’d return the report to Payne in the morning. She’d deliver it personally and be done with it. Seeley was right. She couldn’t very well afford to get in a legal battle over it.
She dropped the article on her comforter and retrieved the Fresca from the counter in the kitchen, drinking as she went back to the bathroom and used a toe to test the water temperature in the tub, now half full. Not hot enough, she cranked the hot water handle another turn, walked back to her bedroom, and sat on the edge of the bed while the tub continued to fill. She told herself she would feel better after she’d soaked for half an hour.
She looked down at the article. Her report was solid. She had worked her ass off talking with experts and pulling past investigations of manufacturing plants in China. And now there was confirmation. The magnets were dangerous. How could they just bury the report?
How can you?
LeRoy suddenly realized what had been bothering her. Maybe her report couldn’t have saved the two kids in the article, but what if maybe it could save other kids? This was no longer just a hypothetical situation. There was proof, solid proof that the concerns she had investigated were very real. Payne certainly couldn’t dispute that now, could he? And what could the agency really do to her? Would it risk punishing her for a report that could save children’s lives? Did they really want to start down that path? And she found it hard to believe the Justice Department didn’t have better things to do with its time than go after a low-level ex–federal employee for releasing a report on a very real problem.
But did she really want to spend her grandmother’s trust hiring a lawyer to defend her?
LeRoy reconsidered David Sloane’s picture beside the article. The idea and the smile formed together.
Maybe she wouldn’t have to.
REAGAN NATIONAL AIRPORT
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
AS HE DISCONNECTED his call with Charles Jenkins to coordinate where to meet, Sloane’s phone rang, the screen indicating his office. He’d left them in a lurch after advising Barclay Reid that his clients had declined Kendall’s settlement offer and would not be making a counteroffer. Reid wasted little time serving an onerous document request, interrogatories, and notices of depositions for both sets of parents. Sloane felt guilty about leaving, but Kannin had nearly pushed him out the door.
“You know me; this is the kind of stuff that gets me out of bed in the morning,” he had said. “Bring it on.”
“How was the flight?” Carolyn asked. Since Tina’s death, Carolyn had mellowed. Her comments had been far less caustic and at times even maternal.
“The way I like it, boring.”
“That might change.”
“How so?”
“You just got a phone call. A young woman wants to speak to you.”
“Can John handle it?”
“Probably, he’s walking around here like MacArthur on the deck of the Missouri, but this is one I think you’ll want to take yourself. She said she read an article in the Washington Post about the lawsuit and that she had some information for you about magnets.”
“I really think John can handle it, Carolyn.”
“So did I, but then she said she used to work at the Product Safety Agency.”
Sloane stopped his progress down the battered hallway to the airport exit. Travelers veered to avoid him. “Did she leave a number?”
“I thought that might interest you. She did, and I checked it. The area code is for Washington, D.C. She’s legit.”
Retrieving a pen and piece of paper from his briefcase, Sloane wrote down the name and number. Ten minutes later, he hurried outside into a muggy evening and found Jenkins talking with a police officer who held a book of tickets and a pen in his hand.
“Here he is.” Jenkins hurried inside the car as Sloane slid into the passenger seat. “What took you so long?”
“Change of plans,” Sloane said. “We need to get to an apartment in Georgetown.”
HE CONSIDERED EACH assortment inside the refrigerated glass cases, seeking something large, but not ostentatious. His goal was to distract, not to cause suspicion. Finally he came upon what he was looking for.
“Did you find one you like?” the woman asked.
He pointed. “I’ll take that one.”
“Excellent choice.”
She took the bundle to the front of the store, speaking as she cut the stems and wrapped them in paper. Stenopolis had chosen a spring mix of purple, white, yellow, and lavender hydrangea with spray roses and chrysanthemums. He picked out a small card from a stand on the counter to accompany the arrangement.
Earlier that evening, after a call from his client, he had popped the door lock on a white van and hot-wired the ignition. It took less than sixty seconds. When he returned the van later that evening he would smash the driver’s-side window to make it look like an amateur had failed in an attempt to steal the vehicle. The owner might make a police report, but since the insurance company would pay for the repairs the owner wouldn’t pursue it, and the police had better things to do with their time. After stealing the van he had purchased a pair of blue coveralls and nondescript matching hat.
This would be his last stop.
He regretted having to further postpone his inevitable confrontation with David Sloane and his private investigator, but business was business, and his client emphasized that the current task took priority.
“There you go.” The woman behind the counter handed him the bouquet, which she had adorned with baby’s breath and fern leaves and wrapped in a purple paper. “These are going to make someone very happy,” she said.
Stenopolis slipped the card in the small plastic pitchfork sticking out from the flowers. “She’ll be surprised,” he said.
BLUES ALLEY APARTMENTS
GEORGETOWN, WASHINGTON, D.C.
LEROY STEPPED FROM the bathwater with one towel wrapped around her head like a turban, and another covering her body. It had not been the relaxing soak she had hoped for, barely ten minutes, but it was all the time she could afford. Ten minutes after she had called the law offices of David Sloane and had lowered herself into the soothing bubbles, her cell phone rang. The caller ID indicated a private number, and she almost didn’t answer, but her intuition told her to do so. She was glad she did. David Sloane said he had received her message and was calling her back. That Sloane called so quickly was surprising in and of itself, but what shocked LeRoy was when Sloane advised that he was in D.C. on an “unrelated matter” and anxious to meet with her.
“My secretary indicated you had some information on magnets,” Sloane had said.
LeRoy explained her former position at the PSA as well as the contents of the report she had been preparing, which definitely caught Sloane’s interest, but not as much as when she told him that her boss, Albert Payne, had suddenly pulled the plug on her investigation. She told Sloane how Payne had initially been excited about her report and that he had intended to present it to Senator Joe Wallace, who had called for a congressional hearing on the rash of product recalls and the potential danger of Chinese manufactured products to American consumers. When LeRoy told Sloane that she had kept a copy of the report he asked to meet with her immediately.
Though eager to find an ally, LeRoy was more eager to find an attorney. “Listen, I don’t want to get in any trouble. The agency said they’ll press criminal charges if I don’t return the report. I really can’t afford to be sued.”
“I understand.”
“But I also spent a lot of time on the research, and it’s a good investigation. There are some real problems with these magnets, like what happened to the two children in the article. I just felt like this is something I had to do. The thing is, I don’t have a lot of money, so I was thinking that maybe, you know, if I give you the report and I get in trouble, maybe you could represent me.”
Sloane asked for her address and said he would be right over.
LeRoy used her fingertips to wipe a hole in the steam on the mirror and studied her face. Unzipping her cosmetic bag, she ran the tiny mascara brush over her lashes then traced the contours of her eyelids with the liner. She spotted her cheeks with blusher and wiped away the excess with a piece of tissue. Satisfied, she put a dab of perfume on each wrist and touched her wrists to her neck. As with the contents of her refrigerator, the options in her closet were limited, especially with her interview shirt in the sink, but if she didn’t pick out something soon she’d be meeting David Sloane in her bra and underwear.
AS HE DROVE, Jenkins advised Sloane on what he had learned about Stenopolis, and how they might be able to contact him.
“He’s been at this for a while, which means he pays attention to the details and is thorough. He’s not likely to make a mistake, and he’ll be suspicious of any new client calling him out of the blue.”
“So how do we do it?”
“Hotchkin said he never met Stenopolis; he gave him the name of the target, and the target disappeared. His payment was made to a drop box. That means we need a target. And that would be me.”
Sloane shook his head. “No. You have a wife and child at home.”
“This guy operates by surprise. He attacks people who are not expecting him. That’s his advantage. He doesn’t have that advantage with me. He’ll do his research, so we’ll have to play it straight. I’m a private investigator from Washington who’s been retained to get a compromising video of a powerful member of the president’s cabinet, which I just happen to have. That particularly powerful member will make a call and request Stenopolis’s help in rectifying the problem. Since they have a past relationship, Stenopolis will feel comfortable with the contact and the likelihood he will be well compensated.”
“I thought you said Hotchkin wanted nothing to do with this guy?”
“He doesn’t.” Jenkins held up a phone. “But I stole his cell phone.”
“He’ll report it stolen.”
“I already did. Then I bought another one and restored the service. I figure it’s good for at least a couple of days. I only have to leave a message, so I don’t need to say much on the phone, but I can do a fairly good impersonation of Hotchkin from studying the videotape.”
Sloane considered the scenery. “We do it your way with one exception. I’ll be the one waiting when Stenopolis arrives.”
Jenkins shook his head.
“It isn’t negotiable,” Sloane said.
“This is personal for you, but not for him. For Stenopolis it’s simply business. If you call him to settle things mano a mano, he won’t take the bait, and then we lose the element of surprise.”
Red taillights flashed as they approached the Frances Scott Key Bridge. Jenkins hit the brakes. “Damn. Washington traffic.”
“How far away are we?”
“Not far. Georgetown is just on the other side.”
Thunder rumbled overhead, a loud boom. Sloane pulled the cell phone from the clip on his belt. “I’d better give her a call and tell her we’ll be late. She sounded anxious on the phone.”
LEROY FINISHED BRUSHING her hair, checked her makeup for the twentieth time, and shrugged. So be it. She had chosen a pair of blue jeans and a powder blue cashmere sweater, which lay on the bed. It was casual, but classy.
She checked her watch. She had five minutes. She picked up the jeans, then remembered she had promised to copy her report to a disc for Sloane. “Darn.”
Still in her underwear, she went into the living room, pulled the memory stick from her backpack, and stuck it into the USB port on the side of the computer. As she did, she realized she didn’t have any discs on which to copy the report. She hurried into her bedroom, pulled down the first of two storage boxes on the shelf in her closet, and rummaged through what had been the contents of her college desk.
She found no disc, pulled down the second box, and found an unmarked silver disc in a light green plastic sleeve. Hurrying back into the living room, she placed the disc into the computer and waited for it to boot. She hoped it didn’t contain the contents of the hard drive she had used in college, but that hope was dashed when the database pulled up a list of files, mostly papers she had written. She’d likely never use them again, but nostalgia made deleting seem somehow wrong. Anal retentive, she decided to copy the documents from the disc onto her laptop hard drive. Then she’d clear the disc and copy the report to it. Whatever she did, she’d need to do it in a hurry.
She highlighted the list of documents and used the arrow to click COPY. The computer reported an error.
She checked her watch, becoming more anxious.
She logged out of the program and tried a different one, repeating the process, this time without an error message popping onto the screen. But as the tiny file folders flew across the screen some stopped, and the computer indicated that the particular papers were so old the Word program had changed to a different version and the computer would have to convert them before saving them to the hard drive. She checked her watch again as the computer transferred the files one at a time, taking several minutes to complete. LeRoy then checked to be sure that the files had copied onto the hard drive, which took still more time, and finally highlighted the list on the disc and hit DELETE. The computer asked her if she was certain she wanted to delete all of the files.
“Yes, yes,” she said, pressing the key.
The disc clear, LeRoy opened up the files on the memory stick and found her report on magnets. She directed the computer to save the document to the disc and watched as miniature manila folders again flew across the screen to confirm transfer of the file.
Her doorbell rang.
LeRoy looked from the screen, surprised. The building had a security system at the front door requiring visitors to be buzzed in, but at this time of day, with people coming home from work and leaving for dinner it was common for the door to be open. Still, she could have used the extra warning, and minutes.
Still in her underwear, LeRoy called out, “Just a minute.”
She started for the bedroom but the doorbell rang again. Rather than try to throw on her jeans and sweater she pulled on her bathrobe, intending to open the door a crack to apologize that she needed another moment. Sloane could wait in the living room while she got dressed and the computer continued to copy the report.
At the door, she unlocked the dead bolt.
JENKINS LEANED FORWARD to look out the windshield as he inched the car down the street while Sloane searched for addresses on the buildings. The wipers hummed, sweeping away the splatter of rain on the glass, but the water, darkness, and foliage from the occasional tree planted in a patch of dirt in the sidewalk made it difficult to see.
“Even numbers on your side,” Jenkins said.
Sloane saw the green lettering on a metal awning over the sidewalk. “Blues Alley Apartments.”
Jenkins jerked the car to a stop in front of a multistoried building. The driver behind honked and sped around him, middle finger extended. Up and down the block, cars lined the curb in each direction.
“Double-park and I’ll run up,” Sloane said.
Jenkins pulled alongside a white van. “Keep your cell phone on,” he said. “If it looks like it might be awhile, call me. I’ll go grab a cup of coffee down the street and come back.”
Sloane stepped from the car and jogged for cover beneath the overhang. A strong wind rustled the branches of the tree in front of the entry. He found the entry keypad where Anne LeRoy had described it, but despite the incandescent lights in the overhang it was difficult to see the numbers. Sloane bent down and punched 602 on the keypad.
A phone rang several times, but LeRoy did not answer. He hit the * button and hung up, then entered the number again. Again she did not respond.
He pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket to confirm the apartment number and looked back to the car. Jenkins leaned across the car with his hands extended in the universal sign for “what gives?”
Sloane shrugged, and Jenkins powered down the passenger-side window.
Sloane shouted to him, “She’s not answering.” LeRoy had indicated she was jumping into the bath. “She could still be in the bath.”
Jenkins considered his watch. “If she’s like Alex this could be hours. Try again.”
Sloane punched in the numbers. Again LeRoy did not answer.
Jenkins shouted. “Look for a building manager. These apartment complexes usually have someone to accept deliveries.”
Sloane reconsidered the list of names then noticed the sign below the box. NO SOLICITORS. FOR DELIVERIES RING 407. He punched in the numbers.
A man’s voice squawked at him. “Yeah?”
“I have an appointment to see Anne LeRoy.”
“Hang on.”
“Wait.” But the man was gone. A moment later he came back. “She’s in six-oh-two.”
“I know. There’s no answer.”
“I can’t help you with that.”
“Can you let me in?”
“Not without the tenant’s approval.”
Sloane heard a click. End of conversation.
ANNE LEROY PULLED open the door. “Mr. . . . ?” Her voice caught at the sight of a large bouquet of flowers.
“Anne LeRoy?”
“Yes.”
He smiled. “I have a delivery for you.”
“For me?”
“Apparently.”
“Who could they be from?”
“There’s a card.”
LeRoy pulled the door open farther and reached for the bouquet. When she grabbed it, the man’s hand clamped suddenly about her throat, choking her windpipe, preventing her from calling out. She felt her feet leave the ground, her body propelled backward into the apartment as the door slammed close.
Behind her, somewhere, she heard her phone ring.
- • •
AS SLOANE FLIPPED CLOSED his phone Jenkins pushed open the car door and walked around the back of the car, the collar of his black leather jacket turned up against the rain. Alex might have had Jenkins on a diet, but Sloane couldn’t help but think that it didn’t take away from the sheer immensity of the man.
Jenkins pushed a series of three numbers on the keypad. A man’s voice answered, “Yeah?”
Jenkins bent to get closer to the voice box. “Sorry. I hit the wrong button.”
He ran a finger down the list of tenants and pressed three different digits. This time a woman with a twinge of a southern accent answered.
“Wrong button,” Jenkins repeated, scrolling farther down the list and repeating the process. When no one answered he entered the same numbers.
“We have a winner,” he said, and rang the superintendent’s apartment.
“Yeah?” The man sounded more annoyed than when Sloane called.
“I have a delivery for apartment five-one-five,” Jenkins said in an affected Boston accent.
“Hold on.” A moment later the box clicked. “No one’s home.”
“Can someone else accept it?”
“What is it?”
“Luggage delayed at the airport. The woman wasn’t too happy about it and I ain’t exactly excited about coming back.”
There was an audible groan. “Bring it to four-oh-seven.”
The lock buzzed. Jenkins pulled open the door and they stepped into a marbled entry with a mirrored wall that created the illusion that the lobby was twice its actual size. The decor was spartan, just an entry table with two potted ferns. Two elevator doors were to the left. One opened as soon as Sloane hit the button.
They stepped from the elevator onto the sixth floor, looking at their mirror images and the back of a man stepping into the adjacent elevator carrying a bag of trash. Wall sconces offered muted light as Sloane and Jenkins started down the hall looking for Apartment 602. When they realized the apartment numbers were ascending they had to backtrack. Apartment 602 was the last door on the left. Sloane knocked three times. No one answered.
Leaning closer he shouted through the door. “Ms. LeRoy? Ms. LeRoy?” He pressed his ear to the door, heard muffled music and a cat mewing, and knocked again. “Ms. LeRoy?”
A dead bolt turned, but the sound did not come from inside the apartment. It came from the adjacent door, which pulled open a crack, revealing half the face of an elderly woman. At her feet a small dog yapped up at them, fighting to get out.
“I’m sorry,” Sloane said. “Do you know if Anne is home?”
The woman gave Sloane a disapproving frown. “She probably can’t hear you over the music. I’ve asked her to turn it down, but she just ignores me.”
“So she’s home?”
“First thing she does is turn on the music. She could have left I guess. I had to take Percy out. I don’t sit here spying on her,” she said. “It’s just that the walls are paper thin. I have my name in to move when a vacancy opens.”
Sloane pulled out his cell phone and dialed LeRoy’s number while putting his ear to the door, but he did not hear the phone ring. He tried the handle and shook the door. From the play in the jamb, the dead bolt was not secured.
“She had a delivery a while ago,” the woman said. “Flowers.”
Jenkins was looking down the hall, then to the woman. “Is there a garbage chute on this floor?”
“What?”
“A garbage chute. Is there one on this floor?”
“Every floor,” the woman said.
“Break it down.” Jenkins turned and ran down the hall, jacket splaying, the hall floor vibrating with each pounding boot. He disappeared through a door beneath a green illuminated sign indicating EXIT.
Sloane stepped back and lunged forward, putting his right shoulder into the door.
The old woman quickly slammed shut her door.
Pain radiated across Sloane’s chest from the wound in his shoulder. It wouldn’t take another blow. Panting, trying to catch his breath, he stepped back, transferred his weight onto his bad leg, and crashed the sole of his shoe into the door. It flexed but did not give. He took a moment to recover, then stepped back and kicked the door again. This time he heard a crack. Mustering what energy he had left, he kicked it a third time, springing the door open. An orange-and-white cat skirted past and ran down the hallway. Feeling light-headed, Sloane gripped the doorframe and stumbled into the apartment, panning the small living area while trying to regain his balance and clear his vision, which had blurred. He stumbled farther in and through another doorframe to his right: the bedroom. Empty.
He pushed open another door and stepped in. The shower curtain was closed. Water had pooled on the tile floor. Sloane reached for the curtain and noticed the electrical cord, his eyes following it from the socket above the sink until it disappeared behind the curtain.
JENKINS GRIPPED THE tubular metal hand railing, propelled himself around the horseshoe turn, and started down another flight of dusty concrete stairs. He tried to maintain a delicate balance between hurrying and falling flat on his face. The goal was to beat the elevator carrying the man with the garbage bag to the ground floor. The car had been empty when the man stepped on. Jenkins could only hope it had made at least one stop on its descent.
At the third floor landing he gained a rhythm—seven stairs, grip railing, spin. Seven stairs, grip railing, spin. Second floor. He repeated the process, descended to the first floor, spun one more time, and came to a door stenciled LOBBY. He pulled the Smith & Wesson from its holster, grabbed the handle, and yanked open the door, surveying a short hall, perhaps eight feet long, leading to the lobby. The bell for the elevator rang. Jenkins took aim as the doors pulled open.
The man in a Washington Nationals baseball cap still held the black bag and gestured politely for a woman on the elevator to step out ahead of him. Jenkins waited for the woman to clear and then yelled, “Freeze!”
Unfortunately only the woman froze. Before Jenkins could get off a shot, Anthony Stenopolis had dropped the plastic bag and snatched the woman by her collar, locking an arm around her throat, a gun in his free hand. He fired twice, forcing Jenkins to duck back into the stairwell.
“Pick up the bag,” Stenopolis yelled.
Jenkins swung his head out from behind the jamb. The woman had bent to retrieve the garbage bag but Stenopolis had kept his aim focused on the stairwell. The bullet skipped along the wall, spraying Jenkins with wallboard dust as he pulled back.
“Hand it to me,” Stenopolis instructed. “Hand it to me.”
Jenkins took several short breaths, trying to relax. He could do little as long as Stenopolis continued to use the woman as a human shield, but no other options were popping into his head. He had nowhere to go, trapped in the small stairwell with the closest safe exit up to the second floor. By that time, Stenopolis would be long gone.
“Now move! Move!”
Jenkins peered out from behind the wall, but again it was brief. Another shot forced him to pull back.
“Reach behind me and open the door.”
“I can’t,” the woman cried, her voice shrill, hysterical.
“Do it!”
“Let her go,” Jenkins yelled.
He peered out. Stenopolis had retreated to the front door. Jenkins could no longer see him because of the angle of the wall. He rushed from the stairwell and pressed his back against the wall, sliding toward the lobby. At the corner he crouched and stuck his head around the corner. Stenopolis had his back to the entry door, his arm, now holding the garbage bag, still wrapped around the woman’s throat. She struggled to reach behind him and find the door handle. Jenkins saw a blur of blue outside the entry just as the door pulled open. A young woman in a coat walked in wearing earbuds, completely oblivious to everything around her.
Stenopolis shoved the young woman from behind and she stumbled to the ground at the edge of the wall where Jenkins crouched. Her eyes widened at the sight of the gun and she started to push away, but Jenkins managed to grab her and drag her behind the wall. She scrambled from her knees to her feet and ran down the hall.
Jenkins swung the gun around the corner. Stenopolis had used the diversion to get out the door to the van. People on the sidewalk scattered, some seeking refuge behind a tree.
Stenopolis fired back into the building, one bullet shattering the glass door into tiny crystals, the second exploding the mirrored wall near Jenkins’s head. When Jenkins looked again, Stenopolis had maneuvered around the back of the van to the driver’s side and forced his hostage inside.
Jenkins rushed out, staying low to the ground, the sound of glass crunching beneath his shoes. He pressed his back against a parked car. The van’s red taillights glowed and the engine roared to life. Because Jenkins had double-parked beside the van, Stenopolis could not easily pull from the space. Jenkins stood, intending to shoot out the van’s tires, saw Stenopolis’s reflection watching him in the side mirror, and ducked back behind the parked car just as more bullets shattered the van’s two rear windows and pierced its metal door, leaving a puckered hole.
The van jerked from the curb and smashed into the bumper of his rental car, the rear lights cracking and metal crunching as the van pushed it forward. Two more shots kept Jenkins pinned down. Stenopolis put the van in reverse and backed into the car parked behind him, crunching its fender and setting off the car alarm. Having cleared sufficient space, he clipped the rental car again before speeding down the street.
Halfway down the block the van slowed and the passenger door flew open. The woman tumbled out onto the street, the van’s tires spinning on the rain-slicked pavement before the vehicle lurched forward. Jenkins hurried to the woman and redirected a car around her. She had a cut on her forehead and was shaking. Jenkins lifted her to her feet and helped guide her toward the sidewalk, looking back over his shoulder as the van’s taillights disappeared around a corner.
SHE LAY IN the bathtub, her body submerged, eyes open, hair floating about her head like a halo. Tiny bubbles clung to her lips, and Sloane’s instincts propelled him toward the porcelain basin, stopping short when he saw the hair dryer in the water.
Anne LeRoy looked to be not much older than her early twenties, just a kid with her whole life ahead of her. Not anymore. The weight of another death weighed like an anvil on Sloane’s chest and shoulders.
“David!” Jenkins appeared in the bathroom doorway. “Shit!” He reached in and grabbed Sloane by the arm, dragging him from the room.
“We have to do something,” Sloane said.
“Nothing we can do.” Jenkins pulled him out the apartment door. “And the police will have too many questions we can’t answer.”
INSIDE THE HOTEL room to which he and Jenkins had retreated, Sloane was supposed to be watching the television for news reports on the shoot-out at the Georgetown apartment building and the death of a young woman in that building, but his attention wandered and he could not focus. LeRoy’s death pushed him closer to the darkness, a place into which Sloane had so often felt himself slipping before he met Tina, a place to which he had hoped to never again return. It was a place void of all light, pitch- black, and cold. When he did fall, he felt like a man plunged into a deep, cylindrical hole, the walls sheer and impossible to climb.
Sloane stood and walked to the hotel-room window, looking out on a dimly lit parking lot. He felt the walls and the darkness inching closer. When he closed his eyes, struggling to relax, he saw Anne LeRoy floating in her bathtub, her eyes gazing up at him from beneath the water, lifeless. Then the face changed; Tina, lying on the staircase, staring up at him but not at him, past him, her eyes already losing focus, the life within her fading. And it made him again confront what he had tried not to acknowledge, that as LeRoy lay dead, Sloane’s first concern had been for the information she had possessed and that he would not get, just as his first concern as Tina lay dying had been that he would again be alone. And he hated himself for it. He didn’t know how, or why, but he had never fully allowed himself to believe that he had made it completely out of that dark hole, that he had found a life and a purpose to go with it. All along, the darkness had lingered behind, waiting to envelop him, and he should have known, somehow, that if it could not have him, it would take that which meant the most to him. It always did. His mother. Melda. Now Tina.
COOL AIR BRUSHED the spot on his chest where a moment before she had been resting her cheek, fast asleep. Tina propped her chin in the palm of her hand and peered down at him, her lips inching into an impish grin. Was it too much of a cliché or just too much of his ego that he thought she did indeed look radiant after an afternoon spent making love in their room?
“A penny for your thoughts,” she said.
“Am I that cheap?”
The breeze fluttered the thin curtain of the patio doors, allowing another glimpse of the view from their terrazzo tile patio—the palm trees and tiled roofs of Santa Margherita and the colorful fishing vessels in the harbor and the yachts anchored in the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The breeze brought the sweet smell of the bougainvillea overwhelming the trestle and climbing the stucco onto the tiled roof. Somewhere in the distance a rooster crowed.
“Actually, since Washington is a community property state, your thoughts are now only worth half a penny.”
“I don’t know if it’s scarier to think that you knew that, or to think that you might have looked it up,” he said.
She smiled. “You keep being this quiet and you won’t have to worry about it. Anything on your mind you would like to share?”
He shrugged. “I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by the view.”
She turned her head to look out the patio doors. “It is beautiful, isn’t it?”
“I meant you.”
She inched up the bed to kiss him.
Their lips parting, she whispered, “For a moment there I thought you went someplace else.”
“I’m just enjoying the moment,” he said, half honest.
He had left the room, not physically, but in his mind. Ever since the wedding he’d had moments where he felt as if he were a spectator, watching a man who looked much like himself interact with Tina. He had dismissed it, but the feeling had persisted. Upon further reflection, he came to realize that he was simply having difficulty grasping that he had found someone so good and that he was, for the first time in his life, no longer alone. It was almost too good to be true, too good to believe it could be happening to him.
And that terrified him.
“Well, get used to it, Mr. Sloane, because I expect there will be many more just like it.”
“Then I better step up my workout routine, Mrs. Sloane.”
Her auburn hair, which she had allowed to grow nearly to her shoulders, draped his face and fell across his chest. When she pulled back her eyes sparkled down at him, as blue as the sky, darkening with the setting of the sun.
She rolled onto her back, her head resting on his shoulder. “Do you think about that?” she asked.
“Think about what?”
“The future, what it’s going to be like?”
“I’m happy now,” he said.
She glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye. “I could tell. But don’t you wonder what we’ll be like? Where we’ll be living? What our kids will be like?”
When he didn’t answer she lifted again onto her elbow, the thin sheet falling across her breast. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You do realize of course that with the wedding vow comes the right to not accept that for an answer.”
“Funny, I don’t remember that part.”
“Oh yes, if you’re arrested you have the right to remain silent. Once you’re married you lose that right. ‘Do you promise to honor, cherish, and tell her everything on your mind, till death shall you part’?”
“It’s nothing.” He moved to kiss her, but she pulled away suddenly.
“Ah-hah! You said ‘it’; that means there is something.”
He laughed. “Maybe you should have been the lawyer.”
“Tell me.”
Sloane turned his head and considered the pale orange plaster walls adorned with paintings of the Italian countryside. A price tag hung from each, painted by the owner of the bed and breakfast. “Have you ever had a moment where you suddenly feel as though you’re watching someone else living your life?”
“Huh?”
He thought how best to express it. “Have you ever had a moment where you feel like maybe you’re in a painting, looking out, and everything is so perfect, you wonder if it could possibly be real?”
Her eyebrows inched closer. “I suppose.”
“I don’t want to think about the future because I don’t think I could ever be happier than I am at this moment, and I’m afraid to let it go.”
For a moment she didn’t speak. She put a hand to his cheek, caressing it. “You don’t have to be afraid anymore, David. I know you’ve lost so much that you must feel like you have to hold on to everything with both hands. But you don’t. You’re not going to lose me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Before I met you I never knew how alone I really was. I mean, I sensed there was something more to life than getting up and going to work and maybe having an occasional date, but that’s what I knew, what I thought life was. So I just came to accept it as the norm. And now I realize it’s nothing about what life is supposed to be. I mean, work is supposed to be what we do, not who we are. I just had one of those moments where I looked around and suddenly felt like I had to be someone else to be lying here in a room in Italy having just made love to someone so beautiful. This couldn’t possibly be real. It couldn’t be my life. This isn’t the kind of thing that is supposed to happen to someone like me.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “Someone like you? What does that mean?”
And therein was the source of his frustration. “I don’t know.”
“It’s real,” she whispered. “I’m real. We’re real.”
“I know,” he said, but did not finish his thought aloud. And that’s what scares me so much. I’ve never had so much to lose.
She sighed. “Then we won’t think about the future; we’ll just enjoy each moment.”
She flipped her hair from her face and placed her cheek back against his chest, her fingers caressing his skin.
For a moment he felt content again; then he turned to the side, seeing the image in the oval antique mirror in the corner of the room, the image at which he had been staring before she sought his thoughts for a penny.
The man in the mirror remained foreign to him.
THE DOOR TO the hotel room opened and Charles Jenkins stepped in. “Hey. You all right?”
Sloane turned from the window, nodded.
“Anything on the news?”
Sloane looked to the television. He had no idea. “Nothing yet. You find out anything?”
Jenkins had walked to a coffee shop down the block with Internet access. He held up a piece of paper. “An address, but we’re going to need to be careful and play this just right. We’ll likely only get one shot. We spook him and that could be the end.”
