He drove her home that night, to the sublet in Georgetown where she was staying, and the next day he invited her out. He came to see the play again, twice. By the time they were married, she was already pregnant with Dana, and Jeff had told her the truth about himself; he wasn’t merely in electronics. They would live somewhere on the Sound, and they both loved travel and crossword puzzles and word games. He gave her a pet name, coined on their wedding day, when he first saw her married name written down. From that day on, he called her-
Pal.
That big man, Bill Howard’s chauffeur. Three whispered words: Be careful, Pal. How could a complete stranger possibly know about that? The car accident with no police record. The death of “John Doe.” The body lying in the morgue with a long history of health problems. A gold locket on a gold chain: Always keep me close to your heart…
Nora Baron stood before the fountain in Russell Square Gardens, Bloomsbury, Camden, London, England. She stared out at the dark lawn, not seeing it, possessed by a sudden panic. The fog had arrived in earnest now, swirling before her eyes, the icy tendrils clinging to everything. She could feel it, cold against her face. The trees, the lawns, the great Victorian hotel across that road, the great museum across that other one; she couldn’t see them now. She was aware only of a rhythmic pounding sound somewhere behind her, and it seemed to be coming closer.
She blinked and looked around her, peering through the mist. The sweet old lady with the big dog; the teenage lovers; the jogger with the phone; the nanny getting up from the bench, calling the little twin girls to her as she buttoned her coat. It was time to go. It was time to take these children home while they could still see their hands in front of their faces. It was time to be careful.
Careful…
Pal…
Be careful, Pal. Be careful, Pal. Be-
Nora heard the little girl scream a split second before she felt the hard impact in the center of her back. Then she was lurching forward, flying through the air, through the blinding fog, and crashing heavily down onto the wet pavement.
Chapter 5
The little girl was still screaming, and someone else was shouting, “Hey, you!” The nanny. Another scream from farther away, probably the teenage girl. A dog barking. Then she heard footsteps running toward her from several directions at once.
Nora was lying facedown on the paving stones by the fountain, dazed. Her arms were outflung, and her beret had flown off to land somewhere nearby. Her left knee and her forehead above her left temple were throbbing; they must have struck the pavement when she went down. She wasn’t sure, really; it had happened so fast. She was gasping for air when she felt a sharp tug at her left shoulder. Someone grabbed her Coach bag and tore it from her arm.
More shouting and barking. The spray from the cascading water pelted her as she reached out with her hands, scrabbling for purchase. She rolled over onto her back and looked up, but she could barely see anything. She started to rise, but a wave of dizziness sent her back down, flat against the sidewalk.
“Ouch,” she muttered.
Hands. Big, strong hands grasping her shoulders. She cried out and struck at the air in front her, trying to knock the hands. Her fist came into hard contact with soft skin.
“Oof! Careful, ma’am. Please calm down. I’m trying to help you.” A West Indian accent, melodious, beautiful. “Lena, stop dat noise! Stop it, child!”
The screaming abruptly ended, but other sounds continued, a scuffle not far away. Male shouting and the dog’s frenzied barks. Nora blinked, peering up into the mist. The nanny was looming above her, holding her, helping her up. Nora relaxed and allowed the big, surprisingly agile woman to raise her to her feet. She was standing now, leaning against the woman, damp and disoriented, trying to make out what was happening a few feet away through the dense fog. She heard the sound of a blow, a fist striking flesh, and a groan. Something large rushed by from behind her on her left, running toward the action. A male shout. Another female scream.
She tried to move closer, but the woman stopped her with a firm grip on her elbow. “You stay right here, ma’am. Don’t get involved in dat. De men will handle it.”
Nora blinked again, and now she could just make out three figures a few yards in front of her, near the benches on the far side of the fountain. As she and the governess watched, the tallest one-the jogger, she now saw-punched the face of one of the other figures, a dark-haired, dark-skinned man in a dark suit, sending him reeling. As he staggered, the man dropped something-her shoulder bag!-to the ground. The jogger reached down to snatch it up while the third figure, the teenage boy, closed in on the thief, fists raised. He and the jogger now had the other man cornered against a tree.
“Okay, ye feckin’ Paki wanker, now ye’re gonna get it!” the boy growled.
“No, Gary!” A desperate female cry from somewhere behind her: the teenage girl.
Click. A low, ominous sound, and now the dark-haired man against the tree thrust an arm out in front of him, toward the two men who closed in, waving it from side to side in a slashing motion. In that moment, through a gap in the mist, Nora saw two things with perfect clarity.
Her would-be robber was the young man from the plane this morning. And he was holding a knife. A switchblade.
“Hoy!” Gary cried, leaping directly toward the knife, but the tall jogger reached over with one arm to snatch the boy from midair and pull him away, out of reach of the glinting weapon’s deadly arc.
“No!” the jogger said. “Stay back, mate.”
The big dog was still barking its head off, and the old lady was shouting at it, trying to control the animal. Nora couldn’t see them, but she could hear everything. She heard the children crying as they arrived to clutch the nanny’s skirt. Nora reached down to place her hand on the shoulder of the nearest little girl, listening. She heard the ragged breathing of the three men in the mist before her, facing off. There was a moment of suspended animation: the man against the tree, Gary and the other man facing him, Gary’s screaming girlfriend, the sobbing children, the barking dog, the shouting old woman, the constant splash of falling water.
Then, with a final violent wave of the knife, the thief took off from under the tree at a dead run, sprinting away across the grass toward the entrance at the southern end of the park. He was swallowed by the fog, leaving only the brief sounds of his retreating steps, then silence. Gary started to go after him, but a firm command from the jogger stopped him. The big man had his cellphone at his ear again, speaking low, conveying some soft but urgent message. The police, Nora supposed.
Now, at last, the dog got into the act. With a shout from the unseen old lady in the fog behind her, the big brown animal burst through a wall of mist, streaking past Nora in the direction the running man had taken. Everyone watched as it too disappeared in the fog, its menacing, low growl fading. A moment of silence, then a sharp male cry, followed by an equally sharp whine from the dog. Nora winced, thinking of the ugly blade she’d glimpsed in the man’s hand. Oh God, not the dog! she thought. She broke free of the nanny’s grasp, ready to run blindly through the mist.
The hand that stopped her was more powerful than the nanny’s considerable grip. The big man in the sweatshirt was now standing beside her.