She was heading down the ramp to the basement level when the shots rang out. Three loud pops in quick succession, accompanied by a shattering of glass. It came from below. She ran down the ramp and ducked behind a pickup truck, listening for more shots. Those three sounded like they came from a single gun, with nobody firing back. An ambush, followed by silence. Someone was dead. Presumably Doug. Would she be next? Her heart pounding, her breath rattling in her chest, she strained to hear. Finally, a car door slammed. Tires squealed on concrete. She stood up just in time to see the car speed past. The Jenna phone was in her hand. By instinct, she snapped a photo. The car wasn’t Charlie’s, but she knew it. And she was shocked, though in a way not surprised.
The taillights disappeared out the exit, and the car was gone. She listened for another minute and heard nothing. Emerging cautiously from behind the truck, she walked toward where the shots had come from, sticking close to the row of parked cars. But then the row ended, and she was in the open. Doug had parked in the farthest reaches of the bottom level of this obscure garage, because he planned to run and wanted to maximize his head start. He probably wasn’t thinking about the fact that it would take longer for the cops to find his body.
She approached the Porsche like a sleepwalker in a nightmare. The windshield was shattered, but no sound emerged through the gaping hole in the glass. No moans, no labored breathing. Only silence. He was splayed in the driver’s seat, his face pulverized to a raw mass of flesh. Unrecognizable. She was too late. They got him. They beat Doug in the end. But Kathryn was still standing. And she had people to protect.
She backed away, then turned and ran. Half an hour later, she boarded the bus north, to freedom.
36
Kathryn sat by her mother’s bedside, holding her hand while she slept. Sylvia’s face was hollow, shadowed by approaching death. The room smelled of disinfectant and was filled with blinking, beeping machines that made her nervous. Her mother’s heart rate seemed irregular, her oxygen levels too low. The hospital was understaffed. She couldn’t find anyone to ask for help. Even if she did find someone, how much could they do? Sylvia was going to die. That was the reality. Kathryn steeled herself to face it, but it still burned. After a lifetime of low expectations, she’d finally come to appreciate her mother at the exact moment when they got separated. It was so unfair. She was emotionally invested in the dream of their reunion. A new life together in a new land. Now that wouldn’t happen, either.
They’d been robbed.
It wasn’t the only robbery she’d suffered.
Small children have short memories. Kathryn had visited her daughter twice since giving birth to her. The last time was two years earlier, too long a gap for a little girl’s heart. She’d gotten to New Hampshire in the wee hours of the morning—too early to visit Grace—and went directly to her mother’s bedside. Sylvia was unconscious, so she sat holding her hand, whispering her troubles into her mother’s ear as if she’d get an answer. She spoke to a nurse who wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell her much about Sylvia’s condition, and tried without success to find a doctor who would. Eventually, she gave up and drove instead to the neighbor’s house to retrieve her daughter.
Kathryn rang the doorbell with a heart full of fierce love.
“Look, hon, your mom came to get you,” Denise said.
Grace took one look at her and ran away crying. She hid in the bathroom and wouldn’t come out, not even on the promise of applesauce cake, which was apparently her favorite.
“Don’t take it personally,” Denise said. “With Marie sick, she’s had a lot of disruption.”
“She doesn’t know me from Adam. I wouldn’t go with me, either.”
Eventually, Denise managed to coax Grace from the bathroom. The little girl sat at the kitchen table eating cake, watching Kathryn warily while Denise made coffee. Later, Grace allowed Kathryn to sit beside her on the sofa as she played with her doll, and Kathryn knew with a blast of gratitude that her daughter would accept her, given enough time.
But time was a luxury they didn’t have. Charlie was out there somewhere, tracking Kathy right now. So were the feds. Eventually, one or the other would find her, and rip her away from her daughter. And from her mother, whom she’d left all alone in the hospital. Kathy needed to get back there to spend these last precious hours with Sylvia. She begged Denise to keep Grace for just a little longer, so she could take care of her mother, offering to pay for the woman’s time. Denise wouldn’t accept money.
“I can’t take your money. Marie’s been a good friend to me for years. Go, be with your mom. Leave Grace with me for now.”
Kathryn returned to the hospital in the Volvo registered to Marie Allen. This time, she managed to track down Sylvia’s doctor and get a prognosis. It would be a matter of days, he said, not more than that. She sat with that information for a while, gazing at her mother’s face, trying to memorize it for when she was gone. Wherever she went next, Sylvia wasn’t coming.
The escape they’d dreamed of together would never come to pass. That terrible truth pushed everything else from her mind, and she sat up through that night, holding her mother’s hand. Sylvia drifted in and out of consciousness, occasionally muttering unintelligibly. Kathryn was afraid to sleep, or even go to the bathroom, for fear that she’d miss something important. She couldn’t bear for Sylvia to pass away alone. But she could only fight off sleep for so long. Eventually, she dozed, waking with a start hours later, running to get coffee, sitting with Sylvia from when the sun came up to when it went back down. She lost track of time, though she never forgot that in the outside world, things were still happening. Dangerous things. The people who were coming for her hadn’t stopped looking.
It was getting light again when her phone buzzed. It was him. Charlie. He’d been texting her at intervals since Doug’s murder, demanding to know where she was, making threats, warning her against snitching to the feds or else the same thing would happen to her.
He’d even sent a photo of Doug Kessler’s car with the windshield shot out and his pulverized head visible inside. What happens to snitches, it had read.
She was terrified to open this latest text, but it was better to face the truth than let him ambush her. With every moment that passed, she felt him drawing closer. By now, he could be standing in the parking lot outside, preparing to drag her away. She had to know.
Heart pounding, she opened the text.
Got sent an interesting picture from a friend who works at Logan Airport. Thought you’d want to know your little friend is snitching.
The attached photo showed Madison sitting at a JetBlue gate at Logan. The display for the departing flight, visible over her shoulder, said WASHINGTON. Seated beside her, mouth open in midsentence, was Olivia Chase, the FBI agent who’d posed as an intern in Kathryn’s office until they found out and fired her.
Madison was cooperating.
She was surprised how much that hurt.
Then again, if Kathryn had any hope of surviving, and rescuing her daughter, she had no choice—she had to cooperate, too. Join the feds, beg for protection. Charlie was off the rails. He would kill her if she didn’t. It was that simple.
She went to her list of contacts. Despite the early hour, Brooke Lee picked up on the first ring.
“Hello, it’s Kathryn Conroy.”
“Judge Conroy. What a surprise,” she said.
Her tone was so filled with contempt that Kathryn was taken aback. She was hoping to negotiate a favorable deal, but that would be tough if the lead prosecutor loathed her as much as this woman seemed to.
“Ms. Lee. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms last time, but I was hoping we could talk.”
“You caught me at a bad moment. Can I call you back?”
Kathryn knew that trick. Brooke needed to get off the line to make arrangements to record and trace the call. Even with the geolocation on the clone phone supposedly disabled, she felt uncomfortable taking that risk.
“I’d prefer to speak right now.”
“Go ahead. Say whatever you like.”
“Well, uh—when we met in DC last week, you solicited my cooperation, and I said I wasn’t interested. I might be reevaluating. I’m now willing to hear you out, at least as far as listening to what terms you’re offering in exchange for testimony.”