After delivering Ham to the American embassy in Bogotá, Ethan took off on his own. For three days, he tried to pick up Tatro’s trail. He only ran into rumors, more questions, and far too many people who wouldn’t talk at all.
Juan, the new doorman, had told Ethan that Juliet was at work. To be expected, he supposed, but Juan could have been nicer. Ethan had cheekily walked across the street and lit his last cigarette, but the doorman didn’t seem to give a damn. A useless protest. On the other hand, he had to allow that he looked more like one of the USMS’s most wanted than the friend of a marshal.
A small, dark-haired girl in a sweatshirt with a peregrine falcon across the front stumbled out of a cab with a huge tote bag and an overstuffed backpack. Ethan almost trotted across the street to give her a hand, but the doorman—friendly Juan—ran out to help. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen.
She and Juan, carrying both the tote bag and backpack, disappeared through the glass doors.
Ethan flagged the girl’s departing cab. Although it was not even two o’clock, he had an evening flight to D.C. for an early morning meeting with Dr. Mia—and a lot to do between now and then. He’d have to lure Juliet away from her marshal’s desk or take the bit in his teeth and try to see her there.
The clock was ticking. They needed to talk.
Wendy decided she loved her aunt’s doorman and her building and everything about New York. She had just introduced herself as Wendy Longstreet, Juliet’s niece. “I know Juliet’s at work,” she told Juan. When she’d recognized his accent, she tried speaking Spanish to him, but he was so much faster and more fluent—once they got past her name and what a pretty day it was, she was mostly lost and had reverted back to English. “I was hoping I could leave my bags here and come back later.”
“She’s expecting you?”
Well, no. “I’ll call her—”
“You can call her now. If she gives me the okay, I can let you into her apartment.”
“That’s not necessary.” Wendy had counted on her aunt not being around, since there was still plenty of time for her dad to drive down from Vermont to collect her. He wouldn’t approve of her trip to New York, even less the way she’d gone about it. She smiled at the doorman, in case she’d been too brusque. “I’ve got a few things I want to do in the city this afternoon.”
She thought she sounded mature and reasonable, but Juan looked suspicious, or perhaps just more official. He was about five-six, probably in his midthirties. His hair was very black and straight, and he had bulging muscles, like a weight lifter’s. Wendy felt slight next to him. She’d pulled her hair back into a ponytail.
“I can hold your bags for you here, but I’ll have to check them out,” Juan said.
“Oh, sure. No problemo.” Gad, she thought. That was stupid. She felt herself blushing. “I’m sorry—”
He laughed and said something in Spanish that she didn’t catch, then motioned for her to open her bags. She knelt on the cool, golden marblelike floor and unzipped the various compartments on her backpack. The lobby wasn’t very big. It had a glittering chandelier and mirrors, and there were curving stairs with a beautiful wood banister and a brass elevator on the back wall. Wendy had desperately wanted to see it before her aunt had to move out.
Juan dutifully peeked at everything in her backpack but didn’t seem concerned about what he might find.
A thin, beautiful woman in black jogging pants came off the elevator, two small dogs yipping at her side. Wendy didn’t recognize the breed. Maltese, maybe? “I’m expecting a FedEx delivery this afternoon,” she said breezily. “Keep an eye out for it, won’t you, Juan? You’re a doll. Thanks!”
She was through the door and down the steps with her little dogs before Juan could answer. Four more tenants had strolled into the building, each with a greeting and a reminder for Juan to tend to something.
“I don’t think I could be a doorman,” Wendy said with a smile.
“You get used to it.”
He looked in her tote bag, filled with snacks—Wendy didn’t trust the train to have food she’d eat. She’d hitched a ride to Rutland with a friend and got on the train there instead of in White River, because it was a shorter ride—five hours instead of seven—and would take her along the Hudson River. And also, she thought, because she was less likely to run into a Longstreet.
She hadn’t run away. Not at all. She’d left a note for her father telling him what she was doing. But, as Matt Kelleher had reminded her when she’d helped him pick pumpkins, she was almost eighteen. She wasn’t twelve, and it was time she stopped being treated like she was.
Juan moved aside her iPod, exposing the library book she was reading. Embarrassed, Wendy bit her lip, hoping she wasn’t blushing. She’d figured out an hour into her train ride that it was a young adult novel. Way too young for her.