“Who is Kristof Ragan?” I said, even though my heart was pumping fast now, adrenaline racing through me, causing a shaking in the hand gripping the gun. “Where can I find him?”
He released a little laugh. “You make mistake. No English.”
I had a moment of self-doubt when I felt very, very silly. But no. It was the same voice I’d heard on the phone, the same gruffness, the same thick accent.
“Really?” I said. I pulled Camilla’s phone out of my pocket and found the number on the call log, hit send. The ringing coming from his pants-some indecipherable pop tune-seemed to startle him; he glanced annoyed at his own pocket. Then he pushed past us like a linebacker, snatching the bag from my shoulder, knocking me to the hard concrete and body-checking Jack against the wall. He broke into an impossibly fast sprint into the park. Jack and I exchanged a shocked look. I scrambled to my feet and gave chase.
“Are you crazy?” he yelled after me.
“He’s got the bag!” I called, as if this justified risking my life. And in the moment it seemed to.
I broke away and ran down the concrete trail past the ornate lampposts and benches, but by the time I reached a fork in the trail, he was nowhere to be seen. Jack came up behind me. In his hands were the pieces of Camilla’s cell phone, which I must have dropped when I fell to the ground. The despair that swept over me might have brought me to my knees if my attention wasn’t diverted by two sharp reports cracking the night. Then Jack was on me, pulling me behind a large rock formation off the paved trail. Two more shots rang out, and a car alarm answered, filling the air with its mournful, incessant wail.
We huddled speechless until we saw the stranger stumble into view. He took a few staggering steps and then fell hard onto his belly with a low, terrible moan. Stupidly, I left the cover of the rock and kneeled beside him, touched his shoulder. He was talking, mumbling in a language I recognized but didn’t understand. I leaned in close to him, barely aware of Jack behind me, pulling at my arm. He was saying something like, “Isabel, there’s someone coming. Someone shot this guy; they’re coming after us.”
But I didn’t hear him then, because I was listening to the whispering of a dying man.
“Who is Kristof Ragan?” I asked him. “Where is he? Please.”
There was no reason for me to think he might know the answer to this question. And it was blindly selfish, some might even call it depraved indifference, to make demands of this person who lay bleeding on the cold concrete of Central Park. But every ounce of my drive lived in this question. And this stranger was the only one I had to ask. In all his final mutterings, which ceased in a horrifying gurgle, I only heard one word I thought I understood. Whether it was the answer to my question or not, I wouldn’t know until later.
He said, “Praha.”
Prague.
That magical city with its bloodred rooftops and towering castle, its muscular bone buildings and dark hidden squares. It captured me the first time I walked its cobblestone streets and marveled at its magnificent architecture. How I dreamed of Franz Kafka in the cafés he haunted. How I reveled in the predawn hush, the only quiet moment on Charles Bridge, that cascade of stone with its towering, tortured saints moaning through the ages. How I loved it even more the second time with my husband-to-be. I felt it became mine somehow when I married Marcus, someplace that would become a part of our lives, of the history of the children I hoped to bring into the world. The next time I visited Prague its secrets would try to swallow me, devour me whole. But I didn’t know that yet.
It made sense to me then. He would return home, of course. How long had it been since I’d seen him in Camilla’s apartment? Two, maybe three hours. He could be on a plane already, couldn’t he? There’d be a stop in London, maybe Paris. But then he’d go back to the place that made him.
When I looked up again from the man whose name I never knew, I saw her standing about a hundred feet away-the woman I knew only as S. She wore a strange expression as she stared directly at me. I heard Detective Breslow’s words again. There’s so much rage evidenced here. She hated me. She envied me. I saw it there in the features of her perfect face. Why? Because he’d loved me once? She had it all now, didn’t she? My husband, my money, even my ring?
She looked like any slim New Yorker taking a run in the park too late at night, except that she had Camilla’s bag strapped over her shoulder and across her chest. She wore black leggings, a short white jacket with black racing stripes down the sleeves. Another man-I might have recognized him as one of the faux FBI agents who took apart Marcus’s office, but I couldn’t be sure-was behind her. He was dark and thick-bodied, but he hid in shadows and I couldn’t clearly see the character of his face.
I rose and Jack moved in front of me. He didn’t know who they were; the weapons they must have been carrying weren’t apparent. But he knew their malice instinctively, acted to protect me.
I reached for the gun in my pocket and gripped it hard.
“I have a gun!” I yelled from behind Jack. I sounded pathetic and desperate.
S turned to look at her partner and they both started to laugh, filling me with childish rage. I almost took the gun out and starting firing, so unhinged was I in that moment. But they both broke into a run. As she turned, she lifted her hand in a friendly wave. And then she was gone, the shadows of the trail swallowing them both. I let them go, drained, stunned. I knew when I’d been beaten. I’d made a gamble and lost. We both stood there for I don’t know how long, just staring after them. Then we heard the distant wailing of sirens.
“We should stay and wait for the police,” Jack said sensibly. “Tell them what happened.”
The foolish things we do in the wake of lost love. How angry we are, how desperate when it’s snatched from us, as though we had some right to have and hold it forever. We don’t see love as an organic thing that might fade and die like flowers in a vase. We compare it to minerals and gems, things that last unchanging through time. When love dies we see it as something precious, solid, owned, that was stolen from us. We chase it, beg for its return, revenge its loss, try to steal it back. We don’t imagine that it could fade like vapor, that it was just a moment that has passed as life itself will.
I was in the grip of righteous anger.
“I need my bag and my money,” I told him, holding his dark, fearful gaze.
“Iz.” He turned, put his hands on my shoulders. I put my hands on top of his. The wailing of approaching sirens grew louder.
“Are you my friend?” I asked.
“Iz.”
“Are you?”
“Of course.”
“Then give me your keys. Tell me where the money is, and let me go.”
He shook his head. “Go ahead. I dare you to pull a gun on me, too. I’m not Erik. I’ll make you shoot me.”
I dropped my chin to my chest. “Please, Jack. I can’t let him have so much. I’ll never be able to live with myself. I’ll die.”
I couldn’t bring myself to meet his eyes. I didn’t want him to see how deep was my rage and my shame, how total my desperation.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Let’s go.”
The disease that Marcus brought into my life had infected everything and everyone connected to me, now Jack included. But he’d always been my coconspirator, the one who understood my mind best, so it was only natural that we should come together now in the writing of this story, the end unknown to both of us. We’d bandied about countless plots, argued over motivation, plausibility, fought about truth in character. Of course, he’d want to help me resolve the fiction of my life with Marcus. I might have convinced him to let me go; I knew he loved me enough to let me do what my heart dictated, no matter what. But the truth is I didn’t want to face alone what lay ahead.
We joined hands and ran.