She didn’t want to remember. “I’ve never liked ambulances and stretchers.”
“It was hell, listening to you with that son of a bitch through the phone. Knowing he had your niece scared for her life. That you had no backup. I’m sorry I couldn’t get here sooner.”
“It helped knowing you were listening in.” She mustered a small grin. “Kept me on my toes. Don’t want to mess up with the chief eavesdropping.”
He shook his head in mock despair. “Where the hell did we ever find you?”
“Mike—” Juliet took a breath, the momentary injection of humor helping her to stay focused, keep her bearings on what she needed to do. “Wendy ran into Tatro yesterday.”
Rivera listened without comment as Juliet relayed Wendy’s story about the diner. Then he sighed heavily, nodding almost as if in response to something he was thinking.
“Collins will want to talk to her again,” he said. “We don’t know enough about what happened with the doorman. Don’t go hanging that one on yourself just yet, okay?”
“Too late.”
“Your friend the theater lady won’t be thrilled when she finds out about today.”
“I’m supposed to move out soon, anyway. Freda’s due back from L.A. before Thanksgiving. I should begin looking for a new place.”
As he started down the hall, Rivera’s wet shoes squeaked on the floor. He glanced back at her. “Your neighbors’ll breathe a collective sigh of relief when you pack up. The fish tanks flooded the place underneath you. The couple who owns it already tried to get past the NYPD to talk to you.”
“They’re ticked off?”
“Upset.”
For now, Juliet thought. When the full impact of what had gone on in their building today hit them, they’d be questioning how a federal agent had ended up house-sitting for an apartment in their building. There were rules, after all. They’d figure out a way that she and Freda had broken them.
“In all my years on the job,” Rivera said, “I’ve never had anyone break into my home and scare the hell out of my family. It wouldn’t hurt for you to take some time off.”
Juliet bristled, automatically defensive, but she told herself he was just trying to be helpful. She grabbed Teddy’s ashes off the counter and remembered him as a cuddly puppy galloping after Wendy wherever she went.
“Vermont must be beautiful this time of year,” Rivera said.
“I get your point, Mike.”
She went back down the hall and stood in the bedroom doorway. Joshua turned to her, but he hadn’t eased up even a notch. He raked a hand over his fair, close-cropped hair, his eyes as haunted and tired as she’d ever seen them, even when they were kids and a trooper had arrived at the door to tell them their father had been shot.
Wendy leaped off the bed and snatched the cracker tin from Juliet and held it tight, sobbing.
Joshua looked as if he, too, wanted to put his fist through the wall.
“Wendy has something to add to her statement,” Juliet said.
“She told me.” Suddenly, his eyes shone with tears, but his voice didn’t crack—nothing else about him showed that he was about to lose it. “She’ll talk to whomever she needs to. Then she wants to help clean up before we leave.”
“That’s not necessary—”
“She knows that.”
Wendy lifted her eyes to her aunt. “You can come back to Vermont with us.”
But it was Joshua who shook his head. “Juliet’s got a job to do.”
Nine
He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep.
As he picked out clothes in his walk-in closet, Ham kept catching his reflection in the full-length mirrors and wincing. Even before his kidnapping, he’d looked emaciated. He was skinny as hell. A string bean. A spaghetti noodle. Unnaturally thin, his mother had told him time and again.
Since his ordeal, his ribs poked out, and his skin color reminded him of a dead trout.
“Bobby Tatro’s in custody. You can rest easy now.”
Mia O’Farrell had delivered the news herself, reaching Ham on his private line at his parents’ home in west Texas. She said she’d had nothing to do with Tatro’s arrest and had no details. Before Ham could ask about Ethan, she’d ended the call.
A bolder person wouldn’t have let her hang up, or at least would have tried to call her back.
Ham might be brilliant, but he wasn’t bold.
He turned away from the mirrors and walked out into his bedroom suite with his clothes in his arms, wearing just boxer shorts, his knobby knees and bony feet all that kept his legs from looking like stilts. And the insect bites, still healing.
The diet those jackasses in Colombia had fed him was just enough to keep him alive. Unripened plantains, canned beans, pork fat. He didn’t know how he’d survived nearly three weeks.
Thank God they hadn’t tortured him. The threat was always there, hovering over him like an executioner’s ax. Money—that was what they said they wanted. But Ham wasn’t convinced. Snippets of conversation, whispers in Spanish and English, demeanors, stances, weapons. Things just didn’t add up.