“Where is she?” I demand.
Grace doesn’t look me in the eye. But I can see how tired she is, how beaten down. Purple circles under her eyes, shaking hands as she lifts a cigarette to chapped lips. “She thought you were dead. We all did.”
I crouch down, force her to look at me. “I need to find her.”
“Are you a cop?” she asks. “I see the black cars in the alley, I heard your voice. In one way, that makes you as bad for her as Gunn.”
“Regardless of what she’s done or what she’s about to do, Grace, I have to see her, before it’s too late. Please, if you know where she is—”
Grace doesn’t flinch, doesn’t say a word.
“This isn’t about what happened, this isn’t about the cops.” I close my eyes. “Please. This is about her and me.”
And then, for the first time since I met her, since Joan told me that Grace can burrow into a mind as quick and cunning as a mole, I let my guard down. I welcome Grace in—pray she can find, see, my feelings for Joan.
Right when I’m about to give up, Grace stands briskly. At the sudden movement, something strange—shiny and metallic—slides up from her blouse, but she quickly tucks it back under the fabric of her shirt.
“She’s taking a train to Philadelphia around nine p.m.,” she says reluctantly. “If you want a shot at seeing her again, you better hurry.”
I round her wall manipulation, jump into Frain’s car, grab the keys from the top visor, and shove them into the ignition with trembling hands.
I screech Frain’s car out onto N Street, cut in and out of traffic, tear around the circle that puts me onto Massachusetts with Frain’s headlights cutting through the foggy January night.
I need to get to Union Station. Catch her. Stop her. It’s not too late.
I nearly drive onto the curb as I pull in front of the station twenty minutes later, grab the keys, and hobble out the door. I run into the huge, atrium-like entrance, follow it to a long, marble--floored hall, and frantically search the DEPARTURES board at the end of it. I read the block letters: PHILADELPHIA 9:16 P.M. ALL ABOARD etched in white type. Boarding, but not departed. She’s on platform three.
I’m not too late. . . . I’m not too late.
I cut through the crowds, sidestepping my way to a teller for a ticket, throw some cash at him, and dart through the entrance to platform three. The thick clutter of overcoats and suitcases swarming the platform nearly swallows me, but I fight my way through it, using elbows and shoulders as I move forward, determined to find her. I search the windows of the train, each face I’m barreling past, each onlooker on the benches in the middle of the platform. My heart’s pounding, my chest’s heaving. We can’t end it like this—
And then, about thirty feet away, I spot a little girl and a young man, both oddly familiar, like two characters plucked from a dream, stepping onto the train. Joan’s right behind them. She’s sporting slacks, a coat, her hair pulled back and a broad hat disguising those doll-like features. A bubble of relief and hope and longing rises, grows, bursts inside me.
“JOAN!” I shout. “Joan, wait, Joan!”
She stops. She spots me across the platform, and her face says it all. Grace was right. Joan thought I was dead. She thought I was gone, and her own relief floods through her, breaks her right open. “ALEX!” she cries. “Oh my God.”
She bursts forward into a run, a clip-clop of her heels, and for a split second, everything else is forgotten. This is it, this is our happy ending, I will have her, hold her—
And then reality sets in. Joan stops running as her hand flies to her mouth. Her eyes grow big, wild—a storm of emotions clouding her face all at once. Longing, pain, triumph, regret. Her eyes flicker up to the train, and then I watch her hold out her hand.
I can’t see everything, can’t hear her words from here, but it looks like she points to where her wrist meets her palm, then points to the tip of her middle finger. She closes her hand, and the two points meet. And then she takes a step forward—
And in one step, somehow bridges the gap between us, through some kind of folding of the platform—a type of linked trick across space and time.
But I’ve never seen anything like it.
I gasp, my heart pounding, soaring, as Joan leaps into me. I wrap my arms around her, inhaling her, taking her in.
“I thought you were dead.” Her voice is cracked, soft and muffled by my shirt.
“Joan, God, I’m so glad I got here in time.”
She pulls away, looks at me with wild eyes. “Oh, Alex—” she gasps. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”
And then I know for sure: it was her. There’s no denying it anymore, and images from that lounge flood my mind—the blood-soaked carpet, the twisted bodies, Gunn left for dead—
“I went to the Red Den to find you. I saw it all,” I say slowly.
“And you’re still here.”