Envy

* * *

Maris had just completed her read-through when Mike returned. She was sitting motionless, the manuscript pages lying in her lap. She had stared at the last line until the letters blurred.

Pain that splinters the body but slays the soul.

Because she was dazed by that line and those that had come before it, Mike’s return didn’t register until he nudged her shoulder. “I remembered that you enjoy tea sometimes. I hope that’s all right.”

Nodding dumbly, she took the warm Styrofoam cup from him. He sat down in his desk chair. When he ripped open a packet of artificial sweetener, the sound seemed abnormally loud in the small room. “One or two?” he asked.

“One’s fine.”

She removed the tight plastic lid from her cup. Mike dumped the contents of the packet into the fragrant, steaming tea, then passed her a plastic stir stick. She stirred much longer than required to dissolve the sweetener. When she tasted the tea, it burned her tongue.

“This isn’t the ending, is it?” she asked.

Mike frowned into his coffee. “He hasn’t shown the last chapter even to me. I’m not sure he’s written it. It may be too painful for him to write.”

“More painful than this? God,” she cried softly. “It’s incredible. I can’t believe it happened.”

Mike looked at her meaningfully. What she’d said was rhetoric, because actually she believed every word of Parker’s account. Noah had done this to his friends. She knew he had. She knew he was capable of it.

“What happened afterward, Mike?”

“Todd—”

“Noah. This isn’t fiction.”

“Noah returned to the marina.”

“As related in the prologue. He faked hysteria. Claimed that Parker had gone crazy onboard the boat. Abused the girl. Attacked him. They fought. The girl went overboard and so did Parker. Noah tried to save them.”

“He must’ve gone into the water so his clothes would be wet and it would appear he’d searched for them.”

“He blamed Parker’s violent outburst on envy.”

“A lie, of course. But a damn good one. Believable. The Coast Guard organized a search-and-rescue effort.”

“Mary Catherine?”

“Her body was never recovered. It was officially ruled death by drowning.”

“What about Parker?”

Mike sipped his coffee before answering, a delay tactic she saw through.

“Parker was found that night by sheer accident. A fisherman spotted him. The coordinates Todd had given the Coast Guard were ‘approximate.’ ”

“Meaning off by miles.”

“Miles. After being in the water for hours, it was a miracle that Parker was still alive. Shock probably saved his life. He had kept his arms moving so he wouldn’t sink and drown, but God knows how he was able to move at all. His legs had been chewed to pieces by the blades of the outboard motor. When the fishermen first saw him, they mistook him for an animal carcass that had been used for chum. There was so much blood around him, you see.”

With a shaky hand, Maris set aside her tea, untasted after that first sip.

“For over a week, his condition was listed as critical,” Mike continued. “Somehow, he lived. Eventually his legs were pieced back together bit by bit.”

“He told me he underwent several operations. What was Noah doing all this time? Surely he was afraid that Parker would give his version of the story and convince the authorities of the truth.”

“I’ve given you a much-abbreviated summary,” Mike explained. “The reconstruction of Parker’s legs took years. In those first few days, the trauma doctors worked frantically just to keep him alive. Eventually he was taken off the critical list, but he spent weeks in an ICU fighting off infection. There weren’t drugs strong enough to keep him unconscious except for brief periods. The rest of the time he spent screaming, begging them to kill him. He’s admitted that much to me.”

Maris covered her trembling lips with her hand, which was cold and clammy. Tears stung her eyes.

“He’d suffered tremendous blood loss. Perhaps that’s why they didn’t amputate his legs immediately. They were afraid he’d bleed out on the operating table. Or they wanted his condition to stabilize before they attempted a surgery that traumatic. I’m surmising. I don’t know. I learned all this long after the fact. No one notified me of the incident. I found out later, by happenstance.

“When he was strong enough to begin the reconstructive process, he fought like hell if any of the consulting physicians so much as mentioned amputation. Even partial. Honestly, I don’t know why they heeded his wishes. Maybe because he was a young man. Maybe… I don’t know,” he repeated with a shrug. “Divine intervention? Providence? Maybe the doctors simply admired the power of his will and decided to honor it. Anyway, they didn’t take his legs. They elected to rebuild them the best they could.”

“I’ve seen his scars.”

“The visible ones. The ones you can’t see are even deeper.”

“Caused by Noah’s betrayal.”

“During those weeks that Parker was fighting for his life, Noah was putting on quite a dog-and-pony show for the authorities. Mary Catherine wasn’t there to dispute his version of what had happened. It came down to his word against Parker’s. He painted Parker as a jealous, envious hothead who had gotten drunk and snapped, turned violent. He attacked Noah. When Mary Catherine tried to break them apart, Parker lashed out and knocked her over the railing. His momentum caused him to fall overboard, too.

“By the time the doctors granted the investigators permission to question him, Parker had already been cast in the defensive role. Confronted with these false accusations, Parker, by his own account, played right into Noah’s hands. He reacted like a jealous, envious hothead with violent tendencies. His ranted denials made him appear guilty rather than innocent. From his hospital bed, he threatened to kill his lying friend.”

Mike smiled. “I imagine that he put his command of the English language, as well as his gutter vernacular, to good use. I can imagine him pulling against arm restraints and practically foaming at the mouth.”

“That probably isn’t exaggerating by much.”

“In any case he came across as a raving maniac, dangerous to himself and others. Noah was believed. Parker wasn’t. He was charged with involuntary manslaughter for Mary Catherine’s drowning. When he was well enough to leave the hospital, he was taken to court for his arraignment. He pled no contest.”

“Why?” Maris exclaimed. “He wasn’t guilty.”

“But he felt responsible.”

She shook her head. “Noah was.”

“I agree with you. But Parker blamed himself for being unable to save her. Noah didn’t attend Parker’s sentencing, but he sent a videotaped deposition. He was humble, sorrowful, soft-spoken when he wasn’t openly weeping. He said he regretted having to tell the horrible truth about that day. A dual tragedy had occurred, he said. Mary Catherine’s drowning. And the death of his friendship with Parker Evans. He thought he knew him, but in a matter of hours his best friend had become his enemy.

“He said that he and Parker had been closer than any two brothers. But when Noah succeeded ahead of him, it did something to Parker. Twisted him. Noah looked earnestly into the camera and sobbed. ‘I don’t understand what happened to Parker that day. He turned devious, lecherous, and murderous.’ I think I’m quoting correctly.”

Maris took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “So Noah went to New York in a blaze of glory because of The Vanquished.”

“And Parker went to prison.”

“Prison? Prison.” She lowered her head and ground her palm against her forehead. “He told me once that he had spent years in rehab hospitals and ‘other facilities.’ I would never have imagined he was referring to prison.”

“Because of the mitigating circumstances of his case and his physical condition, he was sent to a minimum-security prison and allowed to continue with his treatment program and physical therapy. He was released after serving twenty-two months of an eight-year sentence.

“He might have been better off if the state had kept him longer. On his own, he didn’t fare very well.” He looked at her from beneath his eyebrows. “I believe you know that he’d sunk pretty low by the time I heard what had happened to my star pupil and went looking for him.”

She picked up the manuscript pages in her lap and straightened them. “I regret that I ever met Noah Reed. I loved him, Mike. Or thought I did. I was married to him. Wanted to have his children. How could I not have seen what he is?”

“You weren’t looking. You didn’t know to look.”

“But I should have read the signs. I knew this is where he’d attended university, but he never talked about his life before coming to New York. Not even a casual reference. He didn’t have any keepsakes or photographs, except one of his mother and father with him as a boy. He was never in touch with old friends. He never reminisced. He said he preferred living the present to visiting the past, and I stupidly accepted that explanation without question. Why did it never occur to me that he was hiding something?”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, Maris. Noah is like two different men occupying one body. You weren’t the only one he hoodwinked.”

“Was it a plot device for Envy, or did you actually write Parker a letter, cautioning him not to turn his back on Noah?”

“I wrote a letter very similar to the one Parker read aloud to us. Almost word for word, in fact.”

“So you saw through Noah, and he was only your student. I was his wife. Not a strong recommendation for my perception skills.”

“Parker lived with him, too, remember. For nearly six years. Here at the university, then in Florida. Occasionally he saw traces of selfishness and self-absorption, but not until he was in the water that night did he realize that Noah is evil.”

“I believe that. Recently I’ve had glimpses of that evil alter ego.” Looking down at the pages still lying in her lap, she ran her fingers across the top sheet in something like a caress. “Parker’s not evil like Noah. But he’s cruel.” Raising her head and looking across at Mike, she said, “Why did he do this, Mike?”

“Revenge.”

“Why did he involve me?”

“I apologize for my part, Maris. I was uncomfortable with it from the start. I certainly didn’t like it once I came to know you.” He eased back in his chair and focused on a corner of the ceiling as he arranged his thoughts. “You see, in that damning video deposition, Noah accused Parker of lechery with Mary Catherine.”

“So he made the accusation a reality. With me.”

“Something like that. Parker’s success with the Mackensie Roone books should have been enough for him. But it wasn’t. The best revenge he could devise was to write his and Noah’s story and write it well enough to captivate you, a respected editor.”

“Who also happened to be Noah’s wife.”

“I think the idea sparked when he read that Noah had married you.”

“I was the element that made the plot work.”

Mike nodded somberly. “Every good plot has one component that links all the others. The common thread that seams the pieces together.”

“What’s the ending to be?”

“He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Maybe he doesn’t have an ending. Maybe deceiving me, bedding me, and being able to laugh up his sleeve at Noah over it is vengeance enough for him.”

Mike responded to the bitterness she couldn’t conceal. “I’m not justifying what he’s done, Maris. But I can understand it. Parker feels everything passionately or not at all. It’s the only level of experience that makes sense to him. Otherwise, why bother? How could he be less passionate about vengeance?

“He wanted Noah to experience at least twinges of the pain he had suffered because of him. He wanted Noah to know what it felt like to be deceived and betrayed to the nth degree. So Parker tricked you into coming to him. You both betrayed Noah by sleeping—”

“Oh, my God!” She reached out and gripped Mike’s sleeve. “I’ve just figured out his plot.”

“His—”

“Plot. His ending.” She wet her lips, spoke hurriedly. “Earlier, you quoted Noah from his videotaped deposition. He claimed that Parker had turned devious, lecherous, and…”

“Murderous,” Mike finished, slapping his forehead. “Goddamn me for being so old and stupid. As many plots as I’ve analyzed, I should have realized where he was going. That’s why he hasn’t shared the last chapter with me.”

Maris rattled off her racing thoughts. “Parker’s done everything Noah accused him of. Except—” She looked at Mike with alarm. “He couldn’t,” she said huskily. “He wouldn’t. I know he wouldn’t.”

“I don’t believe so, either.”

But neither sounded convinced. “He’s not capable of it,” she stressed. “I wouldn’t have been attracted to him, wouldn’t have—”

“Loved him?”

“For God’s sake, Mike, I fell in love with the main character of The Vanquished. And transferred that love to the author. Look where that got me. I no longer trust my emotions. I believed that Parker at least cared for me. If I hadn’t believed that, I wouldn’t have slept with him. But maybe I’m wrong again. Maybe…”

She pressed her fist against her heart, recalling how cruel Parker had been that awful morning. Considering all the pain and resentment, bitterness and anger that had been simmering inside him for the past fourteen years, perhaps he was capable of murder.

To his mind, Noah had stolen the life he’d had planned for himself. Tit for tat. An eye for an eye. Noah’s life for the one Noah had taken from him. Noah’s life in exchange for Mary Catherine’s.

Now, that she could easily believe. Parker might not kill for revenge, but he might for justice. He had liked that girl. He had regarded her as his friend and felt compassion for her. He would feel justified seeking vengeance for her death.

She surged to her feet. “We’ve got to stop him.”

But at the door, she drew herself up short. She had panicked unnecessarily. Clasping her hands, she bowed her head over them as though in prayer. “Thank God.” Turning back around, she said to Mike, “We’re not too late. Noah doesn’t know that the writer I’ve been working with is Parker. He hasn’t read Envy.”

Mike dragged his hands down his face, groaning, “Oh, no.”