Lindsay hoped it wasn’t an omen that this afternoon wouldn’t be smooth sailing for her meeting with Wyatt and Leo.
Come on…Do you really expect it to go off without a hitch?
There were too many emotions involved all around. Leo might be her own flesh and blood, but he was a stranger.
Wyatt might as well be a stranger, too.
She sighed, spooned some yogurt into her mouth glumly, and stared at the television. Above the news anchor’s left shoulder, an ominous graphic showed the black outline of a human figure and a train, with a red splotch between the two.
“A tragic accident last night-”
She’d had more than her fill of bloody injuries for one morning. She reached for the remote, deciding to find something a little more uplifting to watch before she got ready to go to Wyatt’s.
Maybe there was an old sitcom or a cooking show or something. Anything to take her mind off the day ahead.
“-beneath the streets of Manhattan as an unidentified woman was struck and killed by a-”
Lindsay aimed the remote and curtailed the anchor’s grim report, then channel-surfed until she came across a Steve Martin movie that was a few years old. She’d seen it and knew it had a happy ending.
Good. At least something would today.
She surveyed the array of items spread before her on the hotel desk.
A wallet filled with old pictures, some of family, but others of her friends. A small bottle of Aurora’s favorite perfume. A date book filled with notes pertaining to the upcoming reunion. Vanilla-flavored lip balm-not lipstick-the kind she had used back in high school. A brush that held strands of curly black hair.
She couldn’t wait to get it all back to Aurora’s locker beneath St. Elizabeth’s; what a wonderful and unexpected treasure trove to add to the collection.
There had been considerable cash in the wallet, which would come in handy today. She had, as usual, found someone who was willing to accommodate her request and keep his mouth shut about it. But he wanted a hell of a lot of money for his compliance.
So much money that she thought it would almost be easier to just steal a damned town car-or hire one and ask the driver to take her to a remote spot, then catch him off guard and get him out of the way.
Easier, perhaps, but far riskier.
She stashed Aurora’s cash in her purse. She had more than enough to pay the driver for the use of his car. She just hated to keep spending it this way. Life would be easier when she was back home, back in her element, not having to rely on strange people in a strange city.
Using a pair of nail scissors, she carefully snipped Aurora’s Oregon driver’s license, credit cards, and plastic hotel key into tiny pieces. She tucked those into a small plastic bag and put that in her purse, too. She would have to remember to toss it into a garbage can on the street when she left the hotel.
Those identifying items were the reason she’d grabbed Aurora’s purse from her shoulder as she fell. The longer it took to identify her, the more time she would buy for all that needed to be accomplished.
Shoving Aurora in front of an oncoming train wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it had been hacking into Haylie’s body, but it achieved a far more important goal.
Aurora had seen her, recognized her. She had to be stopped before she told someone-and the perfect opportunity had presented itself, which was a sign from God that this was meant to be.
The platform had been so jammed that it took a few seconds for anyone to realize someone had fallen in front of the train.
By the time she heard the inevitable commotion, she was halfway up the stairs. From there, it was easy to get out, lost in the crowd. She heard sirens wailing in the distance and saw uniformed transit authorities rushing for the track, but by that time, she was halfway to the street.
This morning on the news, she had seen coverage of the incident.
In a city like New York, it was eclipsed by other stories: the masked rapist who had been terrorizing women on the East Side, the mayor’s latest ribbon-cutting ceremony in Harlem, even the weather forecast.
Little airtime was devoted to the report about an unidentified woman who had fallen from a crowded subway platform at the Times Square station. Witnesses said it had been crowded down there, as always; Times Square was, after all, “the crossroads of the world,” as the reporter pointed out.
Nobody seemed to have seen anything suspicious; it was assumed that the poor woman, whoever she was, had simply lost her balance.
Perfect. Everything was just humming along, nobody piecing anything together yet. That would buy her some time.
She wondered how long it would take before Aurora’s daughter, who must have reported her mother missing by now, heard about the subway accident. How long before the police connected the missing tourist with the dead woman?
With any luck, it would be at least another day or two.
Just long enough to let me do what I have to do and get back home to Portland.
Of course, her work was cut out for her there as well.
Hopefully, there wouldn’t be further complications.
Wearily-she hadn’t slept well last night-she reached for the sunglasses she had picked up in Central Park the other day.
She put them on and studied her reflection in the mirror above the desk.
They were meant for a man; they masked most of her face.
Perfect, she thought again.
Looking out the fourth-story master bedroom window above Queens Boulevard, Leo reminded himself that he still had twenty minutes before the car was supposed to arrive.
He couldn’t help it, though; he was anxious to get moving.
He had been ready for over an hour, pacing the small apartment wearing his best suit-his only suit, purchased when he was a pallbearer for his grandmother’s funeral last year. The pants were too short now; about an inch of black sock was visible above his scuffed dress shoes. He had tried to polish those with little success; he had donned them to go to Saint Luke’s School every day of his senior year, then again for Grandma’s funeral-they were all but worn out. Tight, too, at a size twelve and a half.
Were your feet supposed to keep growing as you headed into your twenties?
He wondered if his father had big feet. His real father.
He’d be able to ask him today.
Come on, move, he thought, glancing at the hands of the clock on the bedside table. They seemed to be glued down.
It was an old-fashioned wind-up alarm clock he had won at a street fair a few years ago. It used to be beside his own bed, but he gave it to his mother for the master bedroom when his father-his adoptive father-moved out and took the digital one.
He found himself wishing that his father knew what he was doing today…and glad his mother did not.
She had taken his brother, Mario, into the city to visit Aunt Rose and Uncle Paul. She wanted Leo to go, too, but he told her he had to work.
He felt guilty about that-and even guiltier knowing she wouldn’t check up on him. Uncle Joe, who owned the pizzeria, was her ex-husband’s brother. She didn’t talk to that side of the family anymore.
But she didn’t stop Leo from working there. He needed the job, the money. And anyway, Uncle Joe was good to him. Better to him than his father had been.
He paced across the bedroom, then back again, coming to a halt before the window air-conditioning unit. He probably should turn it on, actually. It was pretty hot out today. Ma would appreciate coming home later to a nice, cool bedroom.
As he reached out to adjust the knob, he glanced down to the street again.
Hey, what do you know!
A sleek black town car had just pulled up to the curb.
Those were a rare sight in this neighborhood, especially on a Saturday.
And the car was early. But there was no reason not to head right out now, since it was here.
Leo had forgotten all about the air-conditioning and about his mother-his adopted one, anyway.