Holgersen held her eyes a moment, then popped open the trunk. Maddocks took their bags around to the rear of the vehicle and loaded them in while Holgersen opened the driver’s side door. Holgersen stood with his hand on the top of the door. “And that Kaganov’s mother—she knew everything?”
“Yep,” Angie said. “She’s cooperating with investigators. Kaganov’s wife apparently knew, too. Semyon Zagorsky’s wife and daughter also had some idea.”
“Holy. They sure keeps it all in the family with that brotherhood-code-of-thieves or whatever. From them gulag days in Siberia.”
“Kaganov provided their livelihoods,” Maddocks said, coming around and opening the front passenger side door for Angie. “He kept them safe, and he kept them all terrified. He’s a controlling narcissist. They knew exactly what he was capable of.”
Angie inhaled deeply at the thought of what her father was. She shared his genes. But she also shared her mother’s. And her grandfather’s. Danek Kowalski was apparently a political hero of his time. Which made Angie at least half good. Just because her dad was a monster did not mean she was one.
“I can sit in the back,” she said quietly to Maddocks.
He tilted his head. “Go on, get in.”
She climbed into the passenger seat. He bent down to pick up Jack-O.
“Here, let me hold him,” she said.
He stilled and met her gaze. An unspoken bond of kinship surged between them. He placed Jack-O on her lap, and then he leaned in, kissed her on the mouth, and he whispered into her ear. “Keep thinking about it.”
She smiled. “I am.”
Maddocks shut the front passenger door and climbed into the rear seat. As Holgersen started the engine, he said, “So, what yous gonna do now, Pallorino?”
“Don’t know yet.”
He put the vehicle into gear, pulled out of the lot, and fed into the stream of downtown traffic. “Yous did a pretty good job investigating on your own. Ever thought of getting a PI license, like, specializing in cold cases and shit, finding missing peeps? You could work with that Jacob Anders guy again if you needed forensics stuff done.”
She snorted. “Who knows—maybe. But I’ve got some things I need to take care of first.” Like seeing a therapist as she’d promised Maddocks. “Like maybe going over to meet my relatives in Poland. I learned I have an uncle there who is still alive. I contacted him. He said my grandfather was a brave political dissident in the Solidarity movement. Ana fled when my grandfather was carted off to prison. They never knew what happened to her, until now. They want to meet me, Ana’s daughter.”
“And Kaganov’s moms is also your relative,” Holgersen pointed out.
She stroked Jack-O’s head and watched the scenery go by. She could not think of Kaganov’s mother as her own flesh and blood. One couldn’t choose one’s family, but Angie didn’t have to honor that woman, although she was probably a victim, a prisoner in her own way. Maybe time would change how she felt—but not now.
“I gots some things to sort out, too,” Holgersen said as he met her eyes briefly.
“Like?” Angie said.
“Like Harvey Leo.”
“What about Leo?” Maddocks said from the rear.
Holgersen snorted. “I has a plan. Guy’s going down, busted. Hooooo.”
“For what?” Angie said. “He didn’t do anything criminal in talking to Grablowski about me, if that’s what you’re referring to.”
Holgersen just shrugged, a strange look changing the shape of his face.
Angie studied him a moment, then gave up. Holgersen was an enigma and probably always would be. She turned to look out the window instead, observing her city as he drove. Victoria. A peace filled her heart at the sight of the familiar landmarks.
She had no job, nothing. And yet she had everything, for she had her identity, her biological place in the fabric of things, and her sister and mother would finally be laid to rest. Closure—it was everything it was cracked up to be. She could now look in the mirror and know she’d done justice for Mila, the little ghost girl in pink.
She turned and glanced into the back. Maddocks met her eyes. A seriousness entered his features. And yes, she now had a chance at a future with Detective James Maddocks. They also had a dinner date for tonight with his daughter.
All felt right in the world.
A SNEAK PEEK AT THE NEXT ANGIE PALLORINO NOVEL—COMING SOON.
EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS AN EARLY EXCERPT AND MAY NOT REFLECT THE FINISHED BOOK.
A SECRET RUNS THROUGH IT
And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
—Genesis 2:9
SEPTEMBER 1994
Twilight lingers at the fifty-first parallel, painting the sky deep indigo as tiny stars begin to prick and shiver like gold dust in the heavens. It’s cold, winter’s frost already crisp upon the breath of the late-September evening. Mist rises wraithlike above the crashing whitewater of Bridal Falls. Fog hangs dense over the forest, playing peekaboo with the ragged peaks of the surrounding mountains. She moves carefully along the slime-covered rocks at the edge of the deep-green eddies and pools of the Nahamish River. Stopping for a moment, she watches a cloud of small insects that have begun to dart just above the water’s mercurial surface. Peace is complete, a tangible thing that feels akin to a gentle blanket wrapped about her shoulders. She’s in the moment as she crouches down to her haunches and removes a wallet-size fly box from the front pocket in her fishing vest. She opens the silver box, listening to the rush of Bridal Falls just upstream and the more distant boom of Plunge Falls downriver. The wind hushes through the forest up on the ridge at her back. She selects a tiny dry fly that best matches the insects hatching over the water. Gripping the fly between clenched front teeth, she draws the line from her rod with her fist. With practiced movements, she knots her fly onto the tippet attached to the leader at the end of her dry line. A hidden silver hook nestles in the feathers, which are designed to fox the trout into thinking the fly is food. A smile curves her mouth as she thinks of her father. H—he tied this fly for her. He’s fished the Nahamish many times. When she told him she was going on this trip with the girls, he’d given her some of his favorite flies. He’d said this one would work best just as the light started to fail at this time of year.
Rising to her feet, she begins to cast—a great big balletic sequence of loops, her line sending diamond droplets shimmering into the cool air. She settles the tiny fly right at the edge of a deep, calm eddy, just where the current begins to riffle along the surface, where she’s seen fish rising for the hatch.
But as her fly begins to drift downriver, she senses something. A sentience. As if she’s being watched. With intent. She stills, but her pulse has quickened. Her hearing becomes suddenly acute.
Bear?
Wolves?