FOR OCEAN RAE

Who, even before her arrival, changed me in ways I never could have imagined…Who has brought more love and joy to Jeffrey and me than we knew existed.

Prologue

She wondered, Is it possible, maybe even normal, to spend twenty years of your life with someone, to love that person more than you love yourself sometimes and then sometimes to truly hate him, so much that you think about taking your new cast-iron grill pan and bringing it down on the top of his head? Or maybe these thoughts were just a result of one of her random yet tempestuous perimenopausal moments. Or the fact that the piece-of-crap air conditioner she’d been begging him to replace for two summers was no competition for a kitchen where there were three pans on the stove and a pork roast in the oven.

The heat didn’t seem to bother him as he sat directly in front of the unit with a copy of the Times in his hands, his feet on the hassock, a glass of merlot on the table beside him. He’d offered to help; it was true. But in that kind of non-offer way he had: “Do you need some help?” (without looking up from the sports section), not “What can I do?” (as he rolled up his sleeves) or “You sit down a minute; let me mince the garlic” (as he poured her a glass of wine). Those were what she considered true offers of help. She wanted him to insist. Especially since she knew that she could never sit reading with a glass of wine while he slaved away at some annoying task like cooking for friends (friends of his, by the way), regardless of whether he’d rebuffed her offers of help or not.

She glanced at the clock and felt her stress level rise. Just an hour before their guests arrived and she hadn’t even showered. She released a sigh and banged a pot down in the sink, which caused her husband to look up from his paper.

“Everything all right?” Allen asked, rising.

“No,” she said sullenly. “It’s hot in here and I need to take a shower.”

“Okay,” he said, coming over to her and taking the slotted spoon from her hand. He wrapped his arms around her waist and smiled that devilish smile he had, the one that always made her smile, too, no matter how angry she was.

“Take it easy,” he said, kissing her neck. She leaned back from him a second, playing mad and hard to get, but soon enough she melted.

“If you need help, why don’t you ask for it?” he whispered in her ear, raising erogenous goose bumps on her neck.

“You should just know,” she said, still pouting.

“You’re right,” he said into the space between her throat and her collarbone. “I’m sorry. What can I do?”

“Well,” she said, suddenly feeling silly, “I guess it’s mostly done.”

He pulled away from her, took a glass from the cabinet, and poured her some wine. “How about this, then? You go take a shower and I’ll get a head start on the cleaning, take care of some of these pans.”

She took the glass from his hand, gave him a kiss on the mouth. After twenty years, she still loved the taste of him (when she wasn’t imagining clocking him with a grill pan). She looked around their West Village apartment, most of which could be seen from the space over the bar that separated the kitchen from the dining and living area. It was small and cramped but filled with the chic clutter of objects and books and photographs they’d collected over their life together. The couch and matching love seat were old and worn, but good quality and as comfortable as an embrace. The cocktail table was an old door from an antique shop in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Their television, like the window air-conditioning unit, was a dinosaur that badly needed replacing. Their bedroom was so small that there was barely room for their queen-size bed and two bedside tables piled high with books. They could afford something better, something much bigger…maybe in Brooklyn or out in Hoboken. But they were Manhattanites to the bone and couldn’t bear to be separated from the city by a bridge or a tunnel. Maybe it was silly, but between that and the fact that the rent was just six hundred dollars a month (as it had been since 1970), because the apartment had been grandfathered to Allen by his brother when his brother had moved to a lovely carriage house in Park Slope, they’d just stayed on there. The children they’d hoped for had never come; they’d never had a reason to expand. Only recently had things become uncomfortable for them.

The new landlord knew he could be getting about two or three thousand dollars a month for their apartment, so he was very slow to fix things that broke, hoping to force them out. And in an old apartment in an old building something was always broken, a fuse was always blown, something was always leaking.

They’d talked more about moving recently, but prices in the city were so outrageous. They’d lived a life where experience and travel had always mattered more to them than a status apartment or a flat-screen television. And though they’d done well, she as a crime reporter for various city newspapers and finally, now, at the Times, and he as a commercial photographer, choices had to be made along the way. Live well, travel well, and save for retirement, while doing without where the apartment was concerned. It had never been a difficult trade. They’d seen the world and were still explorers at heart. In their early fifties they were in good shape to retire in the next ten years, though they’d never owned any property.

She thought about these things in the shower, felt good about them. Blessedly, the hot-water heater was working today. Ella and Rick, Allen’s friends from college, would arrive carrying a hundred-dollar bottle of wine; Ella would be wearing something outrageously chic and expensive, Rick would talk about his new toy, whatever that happened to be. They weren’t snobs; they were unpretentious and kind. But they were very wealthy and it came off them in waves, demanded noticing, begged comparisons. And when she wasn’t feeling good about herself, it bothered her in a way it shouldn’t. Allen wouldn’t have understood; his mind didn’t work that way. He enjoyed his friends’ successes, their toys, their vacation homes, as much as he would if they’d been his own. He didn’t believe in comparisons.

She thought about this as she rinsed the conditioner from her hair. Somewhere in the apartment or maybe above or below them, there was a loud knocking, loud enough to startle her. It could have been the hot-water heater, or something on another floor. She just prayed, prayed that it wasn’t their guests arriving early. Or the landlord, wanting to finish the fight they’d had with him earlier about the terrible leak in the bathroom when the people above showered. Today they’d threatened to start putting their rent into escrow until he fixed it once and for all. The conversation had devolved into him reverting to his native tongue, something harsh and Eastern European, and screaming at them unintelligibly. They’d shut the door in his face and he’d stormed off, yelling all the way down the stairs.

“Those Eastern Europeans are a hot-blooded lot, aren’t they?” Allen had remarked, unperturbed.

“Maybe it’s time. Interest rates are low. We have the money for a sizable down payment. Jack has been telling us we have to invest in real assets to be truly comfortable in retirement,” she said, referring to their accountant.

“But the maintenance costs…And who’s to say prices don’t plummet in the next ten years.” He paused and shook his head. “We couldn’t afford to buy in the city.”

She shrugged. It was an old conversation that neither of them felt very passionate about. She’d let it go and headed off to the farmers’ market in Union Square for dinner ingredients. On the way back, she passed her landlord in the street and tried to smile. He marched right past her, yelling into his cellular phone in that guttural language.

She stepped out of the shower now and covered herself in a towel, wrapped her long red hair in another, and brushed her teeth. She could hear the stereo in the living room and thought it was louder than her husband usually liked it. But she didn’t hear voices and she was grateful for that—no early dinner guests, no screaming landlords. She felt better from the shower and smiled at herself in the mirror. She thought that she was still pretty, with her big green eyes and lightly freckled skin, which was still relatively young looking if you didn’t count the laugh lines around her mouth and eyes.

She hummed along with the radio, a catchy tune by one of those American Idol kids, and thought it was strange that Allen had chosen that on the radio and not popped in a Mozart or Chopin CD, which was more his taste. But he did try to be “hip” sometimes, especially when Rick was coming over. Because Rick was hip—or so he claimed. She didn’t want to tell either of them that anyone who used the word hip probably wasn’t. She and Ella always shared a secret smile when Rick and Allen tried to pretend they were up on recent trends.

There it was again, a knocking. This time, though, it was more of a heavy thud, and it seemed to come from the living room. She opened the bathroom door and called her husband’s name. There was no answer, and the music seemed very loud now that the door was open and she was heading past the bedroom and toward the kitchen. Her heart started to flutter as she called his name again.

She saw something on the floor ahead of her. A glove? No, a hand. Her husband’s hand on the floor. Everything seemed to slow down then. Her first thought was, Heart attack! as she came around the corner and found him lying there. She knelt down to him and he fluttered his eyes at her, tried to talk.

“Allen, it’s okay, honey,” she said, amazed at her own inner calm. Her voice sounded solid and sure. “I’ll call an ambulance. Hang in there, baby. Don’t worry.”

It would be all right, she told herself with an odd stillness. Heart attacks were so survivable these days. He’d been taking his aspirin. She’d get him to sit up and take a dose while they waited for the ambulance.

But then she saw the blood pooling out from beneath him and the terror in his eyes. And then she saw the men standing by the door.

They were fully dressed in black. One of them held a gun, the other a terrible serrated blade red with blood. Both of them wore ski masks. They blocked her passage to the phone.

“What do you want?” she asked, her calm starting to retreat. “You can have anything you want.” She looked around her apartment and realized they had nothing of any real value. Even her wedding ring was just a simple band of gold. She had twenty dollars in her wallet; Allen probably had less than that. She felt a wet warmth against her feet and realized the blood pooling out from beneath her husband had reached her. His face was pale; his eyes were closed now.

“Don’t make a move,” one of the men said, she couldn’t tell which. The whole situation had taken on a foggy non-reality. Her mind struggled to keep up with what was happening. “Don’t say a word.”

One of the men came at her quickly, and before she could even put up a fight, he’d grabbed her wrist and spun her around, placing a black shroud over her head and tightening it around her neck. In her deepest heart, she knew what this was about. She just couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Then there was a stunning pain at the base of her neck and a star shower before her eyes. Then there was nothing.

1

I’m running but I can’t run much farther. The pain in my side already has me limping; there’s fire in my lungs. I can’t hear his footfalls. But I know he’s not far away. I know now that he’s been right beside me all my life in one way or another. I’m the light; he’s the shadow. We’ve coexisted without ever meeting. If I’d been a good girl, the girl I was raised to be, I never would have known him. But it’s too late for regrets.

I’m on Hart Island in the Bronx, a place known as Potter’s Field. It’s the city cemetery for the unknown and indigent—a grim and frightening place. How we’ve all wound up here is a long story, but I know the story will end here—maybe just for some, maybe for all of us. A tall abandoned building that seems to sag upon itself looms ahead of me. It’s a darker night than I have ever known, in more ways than one. The sliver of moon is hidden behind a thick cloud cover. It’s hard to see but I watch as he disappears through a door that hangs crooked on its hinges. I follow.

“Ridley!” The call comes from behind me. But I don’t answer. I just keep moving until I am standing at the entrance to the building. I hesitate there, looking at the crooked, sighing structure and wondering if it’s not too late to turn around.

Then I see him, up ahead of me. I call out but he doesn’t answer me, just turns and slowly starts to move away. I follow. If I valued my life and my sanity, I’d let him get away and hope he did the same for me. We could go back to the way things have been. He dwelling in a world I never even knew existed, me going about my very ordinary life, writing magazine articles, seeing movies, having drinks with friends.

Fear and rage duke it out in my chest. Hatred has a taste and a texture; it burns like bile in my throat. For a moment, I hear the voice of someone I loved: Ridley, you can release the hatred and walk away. It’s nothing more than a single choice. We can both do it. We don’t need all the answers to live our lives. It doesn’t have to be like this. A few minutes later, he was gone.

I know now that those words were lies. Hatred doesn’t release. Walking away is not one of my choices. Maybe it never was. Maybe I’ve been in the path of this freight train all my life, lashed to the tracks, too weak, too foolish, too stubborn to even try to save myself.

As I enter the building, I think I might hear the rumble of boat engines. I feel a distant flutter of hope and wonder if help is coming. I hear my name again and look behind me to see a man who has become my only friend moving unsteadily toward me. He is injured and I know it will take him a while to reach me. I think for a second that I should go to him, help him. But inside I hear movement and the groaning of an unstable structure. My breathing comes shallow and quick. I step deeper inside.

“Stop running, you coward!” I yell into the huge darkness. My voice resonates in the deserted space. “Let me see your face.”

My voice bounces off the surfaces around me again. I don’t sound scared and heartbroken, but I am. I sound strong and sure. I take the gun from the waist of my jeans. The metal is warm from my skin. In my hand, it feels solid and righteous. This is the second time in my life I’ve held a gun with the intent to use it. I don’t like it any better than the first time, but I’m more confident now, know that I can fire if pressed.

He steps out from the shadows, seems to move silently, to glide like the ghost that he is. I take a step toward him and then stop, raise my gun. I still can’t see his face. A milky light has started to shine through the gaping holes in the ceiling as the moon moves through a break in the cloud cover. Shapes emerge in the darkness. He starts moving toward me slowly. I stand my ground but the gun starts shaking in my hand.

“Ridley, don’t do it. You’ll never be able to live with it.”

The voice comes from behind me and I spin around to see someone I didn’t expect to see again.

“This is none of your business,” I yell, and turn back to the man I’ve been chasing.

“Ridley, don’t be stupid. Put that gun down.” This voice behind me sounds desperate, cracks with emotion. “You know I can’t let you kill him.”

My heart rate responds to the fear in his voice. What am I doing? Adrenaline is making my mouth dry, the back of my neck tingle. I can’t fire but I can’t lower the gun, either. I have the urge to scream in my fear and anger, my frustration and confusion, but it all lodges in my throat.

When he’s finally close enough to see, I gaze upon his face. And he’s someone I don’t recognize at all. I draw in a gasp as a wide, cruel smile spreads across his face. And then I get it. He is the man they say he is.

“Oh, God,” I say, lowering my gun. “Oh, no.”

2

I bet you thought you’d heard the end of me. You might have at least hoped that I’d had my fill of drama for one lifetime and that the road ahead of me would not hold any more surprises, that things would go pretty smoothly from now on. Believe me, I thought so, too. We were both wrong.

About a year ago, a series of mundane events and ordinary decisions led my life to connect with the life of a toddler by the name of Justin Wheeler. I happened to be standing across the street from him on a cool autumn morning as he wandered into the path of an oncoming van. In an unthinking moment, I leapt out into the street, grabbed him, and dove us both out of the way of the vehicle that certainly would have killed him…and maybe me if I’d been thirty seconds earlier or later arriving on the scene. Still, that might have been the end of it, a heroic deed remembered only by Justin Wheeler, his family, and me, except for the fact that a Post photographer standing on the corner got the whole thing on film. That photograph (a pretty amazing action shot, if I do say so myself) led to another series of events that would force me to question virtually everything about my former perfect life and ultimately cause it to unravel in the most horrible ways.

The funny thing was, even after my life had dissolved around me, even after everything I thought defined me had turned out to be a lie, I found that I was still me. I still had the strength to move forward into the unknown. And that was a pretty cool thing to learn about myself.

My life may have looked as if it had been on the business end of a wrecking ball, but Ridley Jones still emerged from the remains. And though there were times when I didn’t think it was possible, my life settled back into a somewhat normal rhythm. For a while, anyway.

If you don’t know what happened to me and how it all turned out, you could go back now and find out before you move ahead. I’m not saying the things that follow won’t make any sense to you or that you won’t get anything out of the experience of joining me on this next chapter of my vida loca. What I’m saying is that it’s kind of like sleeping with someone before you know her name. But maybe you like it like that. Maybe you want to come along and figure things out as we go, like any new relationship, I guess. Either way, the choice is yours. The choice is always yours.

Well, I’ll get to it, then.

I’m the last person in the world without a digital camera. I don’t like them; they seem too fragile. As if getting caught in the rain or clumsily pushing the wrong button could erase some of your memories. I have a 35-millimeter Minolta that I’ve been using since college. I take my rolls of film and then drop them off at the same photo lab on Second Avenue I’ve been using for years.

I had a friend who thought that there was something inherently wrong with picture taking. Memory, he said, was magical for its subjectivity. Photographs were crude and the direct result of a desire to control, to hold on to moments that should be released like each breath that we take. Maybe he was right. We’re not friends anymore and I have no pictures of him, just this memory that resurfaces every time I go to pick up photographs. And then I think about how he liked to sing and play the guitar after we made love (and how he was really terrible at it—the guitar playing, the singing, and the lovemaking, for that matter) but that the sight of Washington Square Park outside his windows always seemed so romantic that I put up with the rest for longer than I might have otherwise. My memories of him are organic and three-dimensional, pictures that exist only for me; there’s something nice about that after all.

So I was thinking about this as I pushed through the door of the F-Stop to pick up some photos that were waiting for me. A desk clerk I’d never seen before looked at me with practiced indifference from beneath a chaos of dyed black hair and twin swaths of eyeliner.

“Help you?” he said sullenly, placing a paperback binding up on the surface in front of him. I saw the flash of a tongue piercing when he spoke.

“I’m picking up photographs. Last name Jones.”

He gave me a kind of weird look, as if he thought it was a name I’d made up. (A note about New York City: Here, if you leave a plain or common name, people treat you with suspicion. Meanwhile, if your name would sound bizarre or made up anywhere else in the world—for example, Ruby Decal X or Geronimo—it wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow in the East Village.)

The clerk disappeared behind a dividing wall and I thought I heard voices as I glanced around at some black-and-white art shots on the wall. After a short time, he returned with three fat envelopes and lay them on the desk between us. He didn’t say anything as he rang up the sale. I paid him in cash, and he slid the envelopes into a plastic bag.

“Thank you,” I said, taking the bag from his hand.

He sat down without another word and returned to his book. For some reason, I turned around at the door and caught him staring at me strangely just before he averted his eyes.

I paused on the street corner at Second Avenue and Eighth Street. My intent had been to stop by the studio and bring the photos to Jake. They were some shots we had taken over the last few months: a long weekend in Paris where we’d tried and failed to reconnect; an afternoon spent in Central Park, where we fooled around on the Great Lawn and things seemed hopeful; a miserable day with my parents at the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn, characterized by heavy awkward silences, mini-outbursts, and barely concealed dislike. Faced now with the reality of dropping in on Jake, I balked, loitered on the corner staring at the sidewalk.

I don’t want to tell you that my world has gone dark or that the color has drained from my life. That sounds too dramatic, too self-pitying. But I guess that’s not too far off. When last you heard from me, I was picking up the pieces of my shattered life. I think we ended on a hopeful note, but the work has been hard. And like any protracted convalescence, there have been more lows than highs.

As of last month, Jake moved out of the apartment we shared on Park Avenue South and is living semi-permanently in his studio on Avenue A. Far from finding peace with his past and coming to terms with what he has learned, Jake has become obsessed with Project Rescue and Max’s role in it.

By Max, I mean Maxwell Allen Smiley, my uncle who was not really my uncle but my father’s best friend. We shared a special connection all my life. And last year I learned that he was really my biological father. I am currently struggling to recast him in my life as my failed father instead of my beloved uncle.

Project Rescue is an organization developed by Max, an abused child himself, to help pass the Safe Haven Law in New York State years ago. This law allows frightened mothers to abandon their babies at specified Safe Haven sites, no questions asked, no fear of prosecution. I discovered last year that there was a shadow side to this organization. Cooperating nurses and doctors were secretly flagging children they thought were potential victims of abuse and unsafe in their homes. Through a collusion with organized crime, some of these children were abducted and sold to wealthy parents. In a sense, I was a Project Rescue baby, though my story is more complicated. Jake is a Project Rescue baby for whom things went horribly wrong.

Lately, Jake has abandoned his art. And while he and I have not formally broken up, I have become a ghost in our relationship, behaving like a poltergeist, tossing things about, making noise just to get myself noticed.

I am reminded of something my mother, Grace, once said about Max: A man like that, so broken and hollow inside, can’t really love well. At least he was smart enough to know it. They say we all fall in love with our fathers over and over in a sad attempt to resolve that relationship. Is it possible I was doing that before I even knew who my father really was?

“Ms. Jones. Ridley Jones.” I heard a voice behind me and went cold inside. Over the past year, I had developed quite a fan club, in spite of my best efforts to keep myself out of everything other than my legal obligations involving Christian Luna’s murder and the investigation surrounding Project Rescue.

Christian Luna was the man who started all of this. After seeing a clip on CNN about my heroic deed, he recognized me as Jessie Stone, Teresa Stone’s daughter, a little girl he believed to be his daughter, as well. He’d been hiding for more than thirty years, since the night of Teresa Stone’s murder and Jessie’s abduction, certain that he’d be accused because of their history of domestic violence. I watched him die from a gunshot wound to the head as he sat just inches away from me on a park bench in the Bronx. He turned out not to be my father, after all.

Anyway, thanks to the myriad articles and newsmagazine specials featuring the famous Post photograph as the point where it all started, I have become the poster child for an organization that has altered thousands of lives, not necessarily for the better. They call. They write, the other Project Rescue babies. They stop me on the street. I’ve been lauded, embraced, assaulted, and spit upon. They are grateful. They are enraged. They come to me in the various stages of grief and horror, disbelief and anger. In each of them I see a sad mirror of my own journey toward healing.

I ignored the person behind me. I didn’t answer or turn around. I have found that if I don’t answer to my name when it’s called on the street, sometimes people go away, unsure of themselves. Once upon a time, I’d heard my name called only in love or in query and I answered happily with a smile on my face. Those days are gone.

“Ms. Jones.”

The voice had a kind of authority to it that almost caused me to turn. I’ve always been a good girl and have responded appropriately to commands. Instead I started to walk away toward Jake’s studio. I heard a quickening of steps, which caused me to pick up my own pace. Then I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. I spun around, angry and ready to fight. Standing there were two men in smart business suits.

“Ms. Jones, we need a word.”

His face was stern, not angry, not emotional in any way. And that calmed me. He had strange storm-cloud gray eyes, a tousle of ink black hair. He was tall, nearly a head taller than I am, and big around the chest and shoulders. There was a cold distance to him but a sort of kindness, too. The man at his side said nothing.

“What do you want?”

He pulled a thin leather wallet from his lapel pocket, flipped it open, and handed it to me.

Special Agent Dylan Grace, Federal Bureau of Investigation.

All of my trepidation drained and was replaced by annoyance. I handed the ID back to him.

“Agent Grace, I don’t have anything else to say to the FBI. I’ve told you everything I know about Project Rescue. There’s literally nothing left to say.”

He must have heard the catch in my voice or seen something in my face because the cool mettle of his demeanor seemed to warm a bit.

“This isn’t about Project Rescue, Ms. Jones.”

His partner walked over to a black sedan and pulled open the back passenger-side door. The air was cool and the sky was a moody gunmetal. People turned to look at us but kept walking. Some thugs rode by in a tricked-out Mustang, bass booming like a heartbeat.

“What’s it about, then?”

“It’s about Maxwell Allen Smiley.”

My heart thumped. “There’s nothing left to say about him, either. He’s dead.”

“Can I have the photographs in your bag, Ms. Jones?”

“What?” How did he know about the photos, and what could he possibly want with shots of my almost ex-boyfriend and my very nearly estranged family?

He withdrew a piece of paper from his lapel pocket. I found myself wondering what else he had in there—a deck of cards, a white bunny, a ridiculously long strand of multicolored handkerchiefs?

“I have a warrant, Ms. Jones.”

I didn’t look at the paper. I just reached into my bag and handed him the F-Stop package. He took it and motioned to the car. I moved toward the sedan and slid inside without another word. By then I’d had enough experience with the FBI to know that they get what they want eventually. Whether it’s the easy way or the hard way is up to you.

3

I wish I could tell you where things went bad with Jake. I wish I could say he cheated or that I did. Or that he became abusive suddenly or that I stopped loving him. But none of those things have happened. It was more like he just slowly disappeared, one molecule at a time. There wasn’t a lot of fighting, never any unkindness. Just a slow fade to black.

There was the fact that he hated my family. Not that I could blame him, really. They hated Jake first. But even though a thorough federal investigation found my father innocent of wrongdoing concerning Project Rescue, Jake never believed that my father was completely innocent. (Note: When I refer to my father, I always mean Ben, even though Max is my biological father. Ben is and always has been my father in every way that counts. And even though a woman I don’t remember by the name of Teresa Stone is my biological mother, I’ll speak only of Grace as my mother.)

Anyway, none of them have behaved particularly well, leaving me fractured and torn between them. I was trying to heal my relationship with my parents, find a common ground where we could move forward together, but in doing so I was hurting Jake. And by loving and having a life with Jake, I was hurting my parents. (P.S. Ace, my brother, hates Jake, too. But he also hates our parents. The only one he doesn’t hate is me, or so he says.)

Maybe it was this tug-of-war where I got to play the rope that frayed the fabric of my relationship with Jake. Or maybe it was Jake’s various obsessions regarding his own past, Max, and Project Rescue, all the things I was trying so hard to move beyond. When I was with Jake I felt as if I was trying to walk up a down escalator.

He was in the apartment when I came home. I heard him move toward the door as I turned the key in the lock.

“Rid,” he said as I stepped into the apartment and into his arms. “Where have you been?”

I lingered there a minute, taking in his scent, feeling his body. The only thing that hadn’t changed between us was this ravenous physical appetite we had for each other. No matter how far apart we were mentally and emotionally, we could always connect physically. It was something about our chemistry, the way our bodies fit together. These days, there was rarely an encounter between us that didn’t end in sex.

“I was detained,” I said, feeling exhaustion weigh down my limbs. He pulled back from me, held on to my shoulders, and looked into my eyes.

“Detained,” he said. “Ridley, you should have called. I know things aren’t great between us, but I was worried about you. I expected you this afternoon.”

I looked at the clock; it was nearly eleven.

“No. I mean literally detained, by the federal authorities,” I said with a mirthless laugh.

“What?” he said sharply, looking at me in surprise. “Why?”

I handed him the envelope and moved over toward the couch, where I flung myself down like a bag of laundry. I told him about my encounter with Agent Grace and the FBI. I should have just kept my mouth shut, given the intensity of Jake’s obsessions. But I told him, probably because he was literally the only person in my life I could talk to about any of this. Any conversation relating to Max, or to the events that so changed all of our lives, was strictly forbidden in my family. Even Ace had suggested that I “move on” the last time I tried to talk to him about some things that haunt me still. Isn’t it funny how the people least impacted by tragedy are the most eager to move on? I was eager to move toward healing, believe me. But I was caught in this space between my parents, who wanted to pretend none of it had ever happened, and Jake, who seemed to think nothing else would ever happen again.

I finished talking and closed my eyes, heard Jake flipping through the photographs. When he didn’t say anything, I looked over at him as he sank into the chair across from me. I tried not to notice how hot he was in his black T-shirt and faded denims, or to watch the tattoos on his arm, the way they snaked around his muscles and disappeared into his sleeve. My body responded to him even without his touch.

“Well?” he said, raising his eyes from the photos to look at me.

“Well, what?” I said. “They weren’t able to make a case against my father. The prosecution’s case against Esme Gray was so weak they couldn’t hold her for more than twenty-four hours. They can’t really get Zack for things that started long before he was ever born.” I took a deep breath. “They’re looking for someone to prosecute and they’re willing to resurrect the dead to do it.”

I hated to even think about Esme, the nurse who had worked at my father’s practice and assisted him in his clinic since long before I was born. She’s also the mother of my ex-boyfriend Zack Gray. At one time, Esme and I were closer than I was to my own mother, but she was intimately involved in the shadow side of Project Rescue, as was Zack. I can no longer be close with either of them for more reasons than I can recount here.

Jake didn’t respond, just stared at the photos, one after another. There was something so strange on his face. He wore a half-smile but his eyes were dark. I saw him give a small shake of his head. An ambulance raced by, siren blaring, filling the apartment briefly with light and sound.

“What?” I asked him. “What are you thinking?”

“Nothing,” he said, putting the photos on the table. “I’m not thinking anything.”

He was lying. He put his head in his hands, rested his elbows on his knees, and released a deep sigh. I sat up and crossed my legs beneath me, watching him.

“What is it?”

He looked at me. “Is this him, Ridley? Is this Max?” There was something desperate in his voice. And something else. Was it fear?

“No,” I said. “Of course not. Max is dead. I saw his dead body in the casket. I scattered his ashes. He’s dead.”

“His face was unrecognizable, shredded by glass when he went through the windshield. The face you saw was reconstructed from a photograph.”

“It was him.” What Jake said was true. But I remembered Max’s hands, his rings, the small scar on his neck. There wasn’t an open-casket viewing for him, but we were able to see the body once it had been prepared for cremation. My father had arranged for postmortem reconstruction of his ruined face so that we could all say good-bye to something we recognized. I guess in retrospect it was pretty macabre (not to mention a huge waste of money), but at the time it felt right.

“Because if this is Max…” He let his voice trail off and kept his eyes on me.

“It’s not,” I said firmly.

“Ridley,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “There’s a lot you don’t know about this man.”

Sometimes Jake frightened me. That was the other thing that had started to eat away at our relationship. Not that I was physically afraid of him, but the intensity of his obsessions seemed like a natural disaster, something that could shift the ground beneath our feet, open a chasm in the earth. I always wondered when it would swallow him whole—and me along with it.

“You know what?” I said, rising. “I can’t do this with you right now.”

“Ridley.”

“Jake, I want you to go.” I walked over to the door and opened it.

“Listen to me—” he started but I stopped him with a raised hand.

“No, Jake, you listen to me. I can’t do this. You need to leave.” I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Not at all.

He looked at me for a second. Then he nodded, stood up, and walked over to the bar that separated the kitchen from the living area. He took his leather jacket off one of the stools. I felt bad; I could see that I’d hurt him. But the fatigue I’d felt earlier had burrowed into my soul. I only wanted to close my eyes and disappear into blissful black.

“We do need to talk,” he said, leaning in and kissing me on the cheek at the doorway.

“Okay,” I said. “Tomorrow.”

He left then and I closed the door behind him. I walked across the loft and went into the bedroom we used to share. I kicked off my shoes and lay on the bed, sinking into the down comforter, and sobbed for I don’t know how long from sheer exhaustion and the crushing sadness that had settled into my heart and threatened never to leave.

4

You may remember that I am a writer. Up until recently, I wrote articles for major magazines and newspapers—features, profiles of celebrities and politicians, some travel pieces. I’ve done well and I’ve always loved my work. But like so many things, that has changed over the last year. (Not that I don’t still love my work, although I’m not sure love is the right word for it. It’s more that I’m indivisible from the work that I do, simply couldn’t be or do anything else.) Lately I’ve been attracted to more serious subjects, wanting to explore things that have real meaning. I’ve found myself interested in survivors, people who have faced extraordinary circumstances and not just lived to tell it, but gone on to create greater purpose in their lives. I am fascinated by human endurance, by the capacity some people seem to have to turn tragedy into victory. Imagine that. Personally, I felt as if I had the whole tragedy thing down. It was the other part that remained elusive.

The next morning, bright light flooded the loft as I made a pot of coffee. I turned the television on to watch the Today show as I got ready to head out, but muted it finally because I couldn’t stand the chatter, the incessant commercials. I zoned out on the screen for a minute as I sipped the strong coffee. There was a picture of a smiling man and woman in the corner of the screen. The words Missing Couple were emblazened above them. I think they’d been missing awhile, no clue to what might have happened to them. I got the horrible unsettled feeling I get about this type of thing when I considered the possibility that no one might ever know their fate. I don’t like unanswered questions, unsolved mysteries. They give me angst. I turned away from the screen. I had my own problems to worry about, not the least of which was a looming deadline for O Magazine.

I peered out the window and saw that the people moving along Park Avenue South were in coats and hats. It was sunny but cold, my favorite kind of New York City day. I lingered for a while and found myself searching the street for the man I’d seen in the photographs. I looked for the tall, thin form, the sunken face. But, of course, he wasn’t there. And Max was dead. I wasn’t sure of much in my life. But I was sure of that.

I took a shower and got dressed. As I bundled myself up in my black wool peacoat and light-blue cashmere scarf, I pushed aside the events of yesterday and headed out the door.

5

The Detroit Metro Airport was absolutely grisly. The walk from my gate past dirty walls and over worn, hideous carpet was endless; I swear it was at least a mile before I made it outside. Standing out in the bitter cold, I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the rental car shuttle as the wind whipped at my thin leather jacket, snaked up my sleeves, and chilled me to the bone. I felt nervous on top of it. I was shaken by the things Jake had told me yesterday and had a strange feeling of being watched. I hoped I was just being paranoid.

The area surrounding the airport was equally grim. I stared out the filthy shuttle-bus window at miles of flat gray landscape, black dead trees, and ground already dusted with snow though it was only early November. Because of the thick cloud cover, it was hard to imagine the sun ever shining down on this place.

I’d been here before as a child, though I barely remembered those infrequent visits to my grandparents when they were still alive. My father hated the place where he’d grown up with Max. They both hated it, remembered it as a rough industrial town grinded by poverty, crime, and bitter cold. He and Max spoke of their leaving as if it had been a prison break.

“Places like that breed a low expectation of what your life can be. That grayness leaks concrete into your skin. So many people never leave, never even think of leaving. Once you do, you can hardly stand to go back even to visit.”

My father had told me that more than once, and driving out of the rental car lot, I could see it. The landscape alone was exhausting in its ugliness. As I pulled onto the highway, I thought about Max and Ben, how they never talked much about their childhoods.

“Not much to tell,” my father would say. “I worked hard at school. I obeyed my parents. Then I left for Rutgers and never went back for more than a weekend at a time.”

But really, there was a lot to tell. My father and Max grew up together, met each other while riding Big Wheels up and down the block. Ben was shy, the good boy, loved and cherished by strict parents, an only child. Max was the wild one, always unkempt, always in trouble. My father told me he’d look out his window late at night sometimes, after eleven, and see Max riding his bike up and down the road beneath the yellow glow of the street lamps. At the time he was envious of Max’s freedom, felt like a baby in his Howdy Doody pajamas, his homework done and packed in his bag for the next day, his clothes cleaned and pressed and laid out for him.

“I worshiped him,” my father had said of Max. Max echoed the sentiment more times than I can remember.

If you’ve been with me from the beginning, you know what happened to Max. His father, an abuser and an alcoholic, beat Max’s mother into a coma where she languished for weeks and finally died. Max’s father was found guilty of murder, largely due to Max’s testimony, was sentenced to life in prison, and died there years later. Rather than let Max become a ward of the state, my grandparents took him in. Max, who’d always been in trouble, who’d always done poorly in school, calmed down and excelled in my grandparents’ care. They raised him as their own and somehow managed to help both boys through college on my grandfather’s autoworker’s salary.

This is a story I’ve known all my life. I’ve known that my wonderful and loving grandparents took Max in and saved him from God knows what fate. That Max was the wild boy, the rebel child. That my father was the good boy, the honor student. But that wasn’t the truth. My truth was that my father was the abused child, that my grandfather murdered my grandmother and then later died in prison. That was my legacy, that’s what I came from. When I think about it, I feel as if someone hit me in the head with a two-by-four.

I have always been the good girl with my pajamas on and my homework done…just like Ben. Except lately I’ve begun to wonder, what if I’m not like Ben at all? What if at the core of who I am, in the strands of my DNA, I’m more like Max? Even before I knew we were kin, I knew we were kindred spirits. What if nature wins out over nurture? Who am I then?

6

My uncle Max (of course, he’ll always be that in my mind) was a great bear of a man—big in stature with a heart and a personality to match. He was an amusement park, a toy store, an ice-cream parlor. Occasionally, my parents would travel and have Ace and me stay with him (and a nanny, of course, because Max was not one for tying shoes and making grilled-cheese sandwiches). Those memories are among the happiest of my childhood. I never saw him without a smile on his face. His arms were always filled with gifts, his pockets full of money or candy or small surprises.

At least these are my memories of him. These days, though, I distrust my recollection of the past—not the actual events, necessarily, but the layers and nuances that clearly had eluded me. So much of my life was built on a foundation of lies that my past seems like a dark fairy tale—pretty on the surface but with a terrible black undercurrent. There were monsters under my bed and I was too naive to even fear the dark.

On the plane back to New York, I searched my memories for fissures, for the spaces through which the “real” Max might show himself, this psychotic and abused young man who killed his mother and framed his father and terrorized his young cousin into silence. The “real” Max, my father.

I thought about the last conversation I had with him.

It was nearing the end of my parents’ annual Christmas Eve party. My father had led a group out for the inevitable neighborhood candlelight stroll, and my mother was furiously scrubbing pots in the kitchen, rebuffing all of my attempts to help her with the usual implication that no one could do it the way she could. Whatever. I wandered into the front room in search of more cookies and found my uncle Max sitting by himself in the dim light of the room before our gigantic Christmas tree. That’s one of my favorite things in the world, the sight of a lit Christmas tree in a darkened room. I plopped myself down next to him on the couch and he threw an arm around my shoulder, balancing a glass of bourbon on his knee with his free hand.

“What’s up, Uncle Max?”

“Not much, kid. Nice party.”

“Yeah.”

We sat like that in a companionable silence for a while until something made me look up at him. He was crying, not making a sound, thin lines of tears streaming down his face. His expression was almost blank in its hopeless sadness. I think I just stared at him in shock. I grabbed his big bear-claw hand in both of mine.

“What is it, Uncle Max?” I whispered, as if afraid that someone would find him like this, his true face exposed to the world. I wanted to protect him.

“It’s all coming back on me, Ridley.”

“What is?”

“All the good I tried to do. I fucked it up. Man, I fucked it up so bad.” There was a shake in his voice.

I shook my head. I was thinking, He’s drunk. He’s just drunk. But he grabbed me then by both of my shoulders, not hard but passionately. His eyes were bright and clear in his desperation.

“You’re happy, right, Ridley? You grew up loved, safe. Right?”

“Yes, Uncle Max. Of course,” I said, wanting so badly to reassure him, though I was uncertain why my happiness meant so much to him at that moment. He nodded and loosened his grip on me but still looked at me dead in the eye. “Ridley,” he said, “you might be the only good I’ve ever done.”

“What’s going on? Max?” We both turned to see my father standing in the doorway. He was just a black form surrounded by light and his voice sounded odd. Something foreign had crept into him. Max’s whole body seemed to stiffen, and he released me as if I’d burned his hands.

“Max, let’s talk,” said my father, and Max rose. I followed him through the doorway and my father placed a hand on my shoulder. Max continued and walked through the French doors that led to my father’s study. His shoulders sagged and his head was down, but he turned to give me a smile before he disappeared behind the closing doors.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked my father.

“Don’t worry, lullaby,” he said with a forced lightness. “Uncle Max has had a bit too much to drink. He’s got a lot of demons; sometimes the bourbon lets them loose.”

“But what was he talking about?” I asked stubbornly, having the sense that I was being shut out of something important.

“Ridley,” said my father, too sternly. He caught himself and softened his tone. “Really, honey, don’t worry about Max. It’s the bourbon talking.”

He walked away from me and disappeared behind his study doors. I hovered there a minute, heard the rumbling of their voices behind the oak. I knew the impossibility of listening at those thick doors; I’d tried it many times as a kid. Plus, I ran into my favorite aunt in the hallway. You remember her, Auntie Denial. She wrapped her arms around me and whispered comforting sentiments: Just the bourbon. Just Max’s demons talking. You know Max. Tomorrow he’ll be fine. As fragile as she is, she’s powerful when you cooperate with her, when you let her spin her web around you. Yes, as long as you don’t look her in the face, she’ll wrap you in a cocoon. It’s safe and warm in there. So much nicer than the alternative.

That’s the last time I saw my uncle Max. His face still wet with tears and flushed with bourbon, his sad smile, his final words to me. Ridley, you might be the only good I’ve ever done.

Those words had taken on different meanings for me with every new thing I’d learned about Max. They meant one thing when I thought he was just my sad uncle whom I had loved and who had died later that night. They meant another when I found out he was my father, a man who’d made so many awful mistakes, who’d failed me in so many ways. I wondered what they’d mean to me at the end of the road I found myself on now. I flashed on the articles in Jake’s files—those grisly crimes, those missing women, children and girls abducted from nightclubs and sold into prostitution. Why had he saved those articles? What did it have to do with Max? And why was the FBI still interested in him?

The man next to me snored softly, his head leaning at an awkward angle against the airplane window. The girl across the aisle read a Lee Child novel. Normal people leading normal lives. Maybe. They probably thought the same of me.

I found the harder I reached for my memories of Max, the more vague and nebulous they became. One thing was certain, though: If Nick Smiley was right, if Max was who Nick believed him to be, then I had never met that man. He’d been so well-hidden behind a mask that I’d never even caught a glance. I’d seen only a sliver of the man, the part of himself he’d allowed me to see.

In the cab on the way home from La Guardia, I pulled the cell phone from my bag. Yes, I’d kept my cell phone in spite of my repeated threats to get rid of it. You might remember my disdain for the things (I hate them even more than I do digital cameras). Cell phones are just another excuse for people to not be present, another reason for them to be even ruder and more unthinking than they normally are. But what can I say? I got hooked on the convenience.

There were three calls from Jake, according to the log, but no messages. I was aching to call someone. Not Jake; I didn’t want to fan the flame of his obsession. I couldn’t call Ace or my father; neither of them would want to hear the questions I had to ask (though my father was the most logical person to go to). I hadn’t had a real conversation with my mother in over a year. I leaned my head back against the vinyl seat and watched the glow of red taillights and white headlamps blur in the darkness.

Then the phone, still in my hand, started to ring. I didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID, but the 917 exchange told me it was a wireless phone. I picked up out of sheer loneliness.

“Detroit’s nice this time of year,” said a low male voice when I answered. “If you like shitholes.”

“Who is this?” I said, my stomach clenching. Nobody knew I’d been to Detroit. I’d told no one, took off that morning, paid a ridiculous sum for a round-trip same-day ticket.

“Let me guess. The pictures got to you, right? Then I suppose you talked to your boyfriend. Has anyone ever told you that you have an investigative mind? You might have missed your calling.”

“Agent Grace?” I said, annoyance replacing trepidation, a feeling that was beginning to characterize our encounters.

“So what did Nick Smiley tell you?”

“That Max was a psychopath,” I answered, figuring he probably already knew that much. “A killer.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” I said.

“An interesting fact about Nick Smiley: Did he tell you that he is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic who has been doped up on lithium for the last twenty years on and off?”

“No,” I said. “He failed to mention that.” Something like relief made the muscles in my shoulders relax a bit.

“Doesn’t make him a liar. Just makes his version of the truth questionable.”

Isn’t that what the truth comes down to? An agreement of variations? Think about your last family drama or the last fight you had with your spouse. What really happened? Who said what and when? Who was the instigator and who was the reactor? Is there an absolute truth, one that exists separately from the personal variations? Maybe. But maybe not. Quantum physics tells us that life is a series of possibilities existing side by side in any given moment; it is our choices that create our version of reality. Nick Smiley has chosen his memory of Max. I have chosen mine. Who’s right? But maybe the truth is that Max was a shape shifter, becoming what he needed to be to control whatever situation he was in. He controlled Nick with terror, me with adoration, and kept his true form hidden from both of us.

“So what are you trying to tell me?” I asked him. “And why are you following me?”

“I don’t have to answer your questions,” he said calmly.

I thought on it for a second. First they snatch me on the street and take my photographs, then they let me go after showing me blowups of a man they obviously believe is Max even though I know him to be dead. Then Agent Grace makes this call, clearly toying with me, clearly letting me know that they’re on my every move. I couldn’t figure out his agenda, what he was trying to accomplish. Maybe he was just lonely, alone with his obsession, like me, like Jake. Maybe he needed someone to talk to.

“You still there, Ridley?”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“You still there, Ms. Jones?”

“No,” I answered, and hung up.

7

You’ve probably noticed that I don’t have any friends. It wasn’t always that way. I had many friends in high school. In college I knew lots of people, got along well with my roommates, had a few boyfriends. I had a handful of close female friends—you know, the kind of people you spend all night talking to, eating tubs of frozen yogurt with, reading one another’s tarot cards. But I’m not sure I ever spilled my guts the way they did. I didn’t have a whole lot of angst when it came to boys. To be honest, I think I caused more heartbreak than I endured. At that time, I didn’t really have any pain relating to my family, except for Ace, and that was a secret I guarded carefully. Maybe I held back, didn’t give as much of myself as I could have. Maybe that’s why those relationships fell away over the years.

I did keep in touch with a few people I knew after college as we all moved from our bohemian academic existence into the workforce. There was Julia, a tough-talking, martial-arts-studying graphic artist; Will, my guitar-playing friend and sometimes lover; Amy, a perky, sunny person who went into publishing. But one by one, these relationships started to fall away. Julia and I seemed to be in some kind of competition that neither of us could ever win. Will always wanted more from me than I wanted to give. And Amy disappeared into a relationship with an overbearing Italian guy and seemed to just stop showing up.

There were other reasons, too, why I seem not to have any enduring friendships. Of course, Ace has always taken a lot of my energy. I’ve always been unusually close to my father, precluding the need for a confidant. Then there were my years with Zack, who wasn’t a very social person; we stayed in a lot. Then there was the whole Project Rescue thing, then Jake. Don’t get me wrong; I have plenty of acquaintances, colleagues. I get invited to lots of parties—professional parties, that is. But as for real friends, friends of my heart? I guess there’s no one but Jake and my father, and obviously those relationships were seriously challenged.

But maybe it isn’t any of these things, these external reasons. Maybe it’s me, the writer in me who always stands just apart, observing. In enough to belong, out enough to really see. Maybe people sense that about me, sense the distance I unconsciously keep. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I find myself alone a lot of the time these days.

I was thinking about this because I had to ask myself why I did what I did next. My guess: I had no place else to turn, no one with whom to talk all this out, no one to advise me against my next action.

It was cold as I sat on the porch. I pushed myself back and forth on the wooden swing that hung from the roof and watched some kids play kickball on the street. They were all pink-faced and yelling, mostly boys with a couple of girls hanging tough. It was a pretty rough game—some pushing, a couple of trips to the concrete, some tears, but nothing too awful. I remembered those street games when I was a kid. There was something about that combination of excitement and physical exertion, some kind of electric charge that you don’t get much as an adult. Now everything that feels that good comes with some sort of baggage to weigh it down.

I could see my breath cloud and my feet were numb. I’d waited a couple of hours, was prepared to wait longer if necessary. As the sun started to set, I saw her get off a bus on the corner and walk toward me. She looked thin and hunched over in a plain wool coat and a blue woolen hat. She carried grocery bags, her eyes on the sidewalk as she approached her house. At the gate, she paused, looked up at me. She shook her head.

“I can’t talk to you,” she said. “You know that.”

“The investigation’s over. You can talk if you want to.”

She put down her groceries and unlatched the gate, walked up the path. I didn’t get up to help her. It wasn’t like that anymore.

“Okay,” she said. “Then I don’t want to. I have nothing to say to you, little girl.”

She looked drawn and pale as she unlatched the door. Black smudges under her eyes told me she wasn’t sleeping well at night, and something within me took a cold, dark victory in that. I didn’t get up as she unlocked the door and pulled her groceries inside. She closed the door; I heard it lock. I walked over and looked at her through the glass.

“I know he’s alive,” I told her loudly. I didn’t really know that. I was, in fact, convinced that he was dead. But I wanted to see what her reaction would be.

She brought her face close to the glass. I expected to see fear; instead I saw some combination of anger and pity.

“Have you lost your mind?” she asked me.

“You identified the body that night,” I said. “Why didn’t my father do it?”

“Because he couldn’t bear it, Ridley. What do you think? He couldn’t stand to see his best friend’s face shredded by glass, unrecognizable, see him dead upon a gurney. He called me. I came and I spared him that.”

“Why you? Why not my mother?”

“How the hell should I know?” she snapped. Her eyes looked wild.

“You’re sure it was him? Or did you lie about that, too?”

She closed her eyes and shook her head. “You should think about getting professional help,” she said unkindly.

I let a beat pass. I looked for the person I used to love, but she was gone in a way more total than if she had died.

“What are you afraid of, Esme?” I asked finally. I was surprised to hear my voice infused with sadness.

Her face went pale, I think more out of rage than anything else. And hatred. She hated me and I could see it, could feel it coming off of her in waves. “I’m afraid of you, Ridley,” she said finally. “You’ve destroyed us all and you’re still coming around with a sledgehammer. You should be ashamed for what you’ve done.”

I laughed, fogging the glass between us. It sounded loud and unpleasant even to my own ears. I knew she believed all of what had happened was my fault. I knew my parents felt that way a little, too. It was amazing how this had become about what I had done to them. It was a staggering show of narcissism, but I guess it’s the same narcissism that allowed them to do what they did to all those children, to me. They would have needed to be utterly convinced of their own self-righteousness. It made me a little sick sometimes; I tried not to think about it. I think it was the single reason that Jake disbelieved my father’s claims of innocence, that he couldn’t forgive.

Once upon a time, it would have hurt to know that Esme hated me. Now it just made me angry.

“I’ll keep swinging until I know all the answers,” I said with a smile.

“You do and you’ll wind up like that New York Times reporter,” she said with such venom that I took a step back. Her words set off bottle rockets in my chest.

“What?” I asked her. “What did you say? Are you talking about Myra Lyall?”

She gave me a dark look and I swear I saw the corners of her mouth turn up in a sick smile. She closed the curtain on me then, and I heard her walk down the hall away from me. Behind the gauzy material I saw her shadow disappear through a bright doorway. I called after her a few times, pounding on the door, but she never answered. I noticed the kids on the street had stopped playing their game. Some of them were staring at me and some of them were walking off.

Finally I gave up and walked toward the train, my heart pounding, head swimming. I was so shocked by what she had said that I couldn’t even come up with any questions to ask myself. I just felt this belly full of fear, this weird sense that I was about to walk off the edge of my life…again. Everyone around me seemed full of malice; the sky had taken on a gray cast and threatened snow.

8

After a terrible night’s sleep, I got up in the morning and made a few phone calls. Esme’s words and the things Agent Grace had told me about Myra and Allen Lyall were smoldering in my center. I’d seen a poster of their faces on the way back into the city the night before. There was an update on the morning news, which basically consisted of a downcast detective saying that there were no new leads and asking anyone who might have seen anything to come forward.

I felt connected to Myra Lyall now. I started to wish I’d returned her phone calls when I’d had the chance. And there was something else. I wondered if she’d found something out—something about Project Rescue or about Max—that had gotten her killed. It was a terrible itch. Of course, I had to scratch it.

I knew a couple people over at the Times: an Arts & Leisure editor named Jenna Rich and a sportswriter I dated briefly, a guy named Dennis Leach (unfortunate name, I know). I didn’t reach either of them, so I left messages. I made a few more visits to the mystery website, had the same experience I’d had the night before, and hopped in the shower. As I was finishing up and pulling on some clothes, my phone rang.

“Hey, it’s Jenna,” said a youthful voice when I answered. “How are you, stranger?”

“Hey, there. Thanks for getting back to me,” I said. “Can’t complain. You?”

Jenna was a talker, which is why I’d called her. She was a one-woman corporate rumor mill. She told me how she’d married last year, been promoted, and was pregnant with her first child. I knew we were about the same age, and though I was happy for her, it made me feel somehow behind, like she was clearing the hurdles with grace and skill and I was still hovering around the starting gate. As she chatted on, I spent a moment wondering how this conversation would have gone if I’d married Zack when he’d asked two years ago, if I’d be having this conversation at all. Would I be pregnant? Would I have taken one of the many staff writing positions that had been offered to me over the years? Would I be happy in the ignorance of my past, in marrying a man I knew I’d never love but with whom I was more or less compatible? I didn’t dwell on it too long; not much point in that. We make our choices. We forge ahead. Or we curl up and wallow in regret. Both alternatives have their appeal. At the moment I was forging.

“So what’s up?” she said after the niceties had been exchanged. “You have an idea for me?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “I’m wondering what you know about Myra Lyall. I had some calls from her a few weeks ago. I suppose something to do with Project Rescue. I was thinking about returning her call but I wanted to see if you knew her first.”

She was quiet for a minute. “You didn’t hear?”

“What?” I said with concern and interest, playing dumb.

“God,” she said with a sigh. “She and her husband disappeared a couple of weeks ago. Apparently someone accessed our servers—which, by the way, is supposed to be next to impossible—and wiped her hard drive and all her e-mail communications. People here are pretty spooked. It’s just terrible, Ridley.”

“Wow,” I said, trying to sound suitably shocked. “That’s awful. What are the police saying? Does anyone have any idea what happened?”

“There are all kinds of theories floating around,” she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. “One has to do with her landlord. She and her husband were at war with him. They lived in this rent-controlled apartment they’d been in since the seventies. The new owner had recently bought the building and wanted them out so that he could get the market rate for the apartment. Suddenly they had terrible mice and roach problems, the heat never worked. Apparently, they’d decided to put their rent in escrow until he fixed things; that sent him over the edge. Word is he has ties to the Albanian mob.”

“But that doesn’t explain how the Times server got wiped clean…or why.”

“No. It doesn’t,” she said softly.

“So…what else are people saying? I mean, what was she working on at the time?”

I thought Jenna might clam up. I could hear her breathing. She was a pretty woman with small, serious features and bright green eyes, peaches-and-cream skin. It had been a while since I’d had any face time with her, but I could imagine her frowning, tapping her pen on the desk.

“A lot of people around here think she stumbled onto something. It’s just a rumor.”

“Something to do with Project Rescue?”

“I don’t think so. She put that story to bed over a month ago. And that was more of a human-interest piece than her usual investigative work. She kind of got pushed into it by this new editor—you know, put-some-faces-on-the-crime kind of a thing. Besides, as far as news stories go, there wasn’t any new ground to cover.”

“So…what, then?”

“I dated one of the IT guys for a while ages ago. Grant Webster. He’s kind of ‘into’ his job—a little bit too into it, if you ask me. That’s one of the major reasons we broke up. On top of his job, he has this whole website devoted to the history of hacking, all this conspiracy-theory tech stuff. Anyway, he said it wasn’t the usual kind of hacking. It’s one thing to get in and read e-mail, or to try to steal subscriber credit-card info, or to take over the site for a while. It’s quite another to hack in to the level necessary to erase data from a server. He thinks it might have been someone in-house, someone who was paid to do it…” She let the sentence trail off.

“Or?” I said.

“Or it was one of the federal agencies.”

I let the information sink in. “Like the CIA or the FBI?”

“Right.”

“So the rumor is, she stumbled onto something she wasn’t supposed to know about, possibly involving one of the federal agencies, so someone made her disappear and erased all her e-mail correspondence?”

She didn’t pick up the skepticism in my voice.

“And her hard drive, containing anything she might have been working on now plus everything she’d ever worked on in the past, though of course most of that has been published. And her voice mail,” added Jenna. “Which, according to Grant, is a lot easier than erasing e-mail.”

“That’s quite a theory,” I said.

“It’s just, you know, get a bunch of reporters and IT people together over a few beers and you can’t believe the stuff we come up with,” she said with a little laugh. “Those IT guys are all conspiracy theorists at heart.”

She went on a bit about Grant and how she suspected he’d been writing code in his head while they were making love, how his idea of a good time was a box of Twinkies and a nineteen-inch flat-screen monitor. She mentioned his website again and I jotted it down: www.isanyonepayingattention.com. I let her go on, giggled with her where appropriate, made the expected affirming noises, not wanting to seem overeager for more information on Myra Lyall.

I segued back to that topic awkwardly, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Any other wild theories about Myra?”

“Hmm…I guess the only other thing I heard was that she got some kind of anonymous tip that she followed up on a few days before she disappeared.”

“What kind of a tip?”

“I don’t know. According to her assistant, she got some e-mail—or was it a phone call?—that sent her skating from the office. That’s as much as anyone knows, I think. All her e-mail, even her notebooks—”

“Are gone,” I finished for her.

We were both quiet for a second and I could hear her other line ringing in the background, the staccato of her fingers on a keyboard.

“Hey, you want me to keep you posted?” she said. “If I hear anything else?”

“That would be great, Jenna. Also, can I have Grant’s contact info? I’m doing an article on computer crimes. I’d love to ask him a few questions.”

She hesitated a second. “Sure,” she said. “That doesn’t sound like your usual beat.”

“I’m branching out these days. Trying to broaden the scope of my writing, you know?”

She gave me his information. Before she hung up, she said, “Hey, don’t tell him any of the things I said about him, okay?”

“Never,” I assured her.

We hung up and I thought about our conversation as I poured myself another cup of coffee and walked over to my window. Then I returned to my computer and visited Grant’s website. A flash intro read bold white on a black screen: Is anyone paying attention? Another screen followed: The federal government is fucking with us. A third screen: And we sit around watching Survivor, eating pizza, just letting it all happen? Wake up! The screen started flashing. It’s time for a revolution. The flash intro ended and the home page opened. It was heavy on the blacks and reds, laid out to look like a newspaper page. The center headline read: WHERE IS MYRA LYALL???

The article recounted the known details of Myra and Allen Lyall’s disappearance, things I had already been told and had read in the articles in Jake’s file. It went on:

9

In my mailbox at home there was a postcard from my father, sent apparently from their port of call in Positano. Having a wonderful time! it read in my father’s sharp, scrawling hand. Thinking of you as always. The thought of them traipsing around Europe snapping photographs and mailing off postcards, frankly, made me sick. I threw the postcard in the trash, poured myself a glass of wine from the half-empty bottle on the counter, and played my messages. I had an uneasy feeling, found myself looking around my apartment, peering through the doorway into my dark bedroom.

“Hey, it’s me.” Jake. “Can we get together tonight? Come to the studio around eight if you feel like it. We’ll go to Yaffa. Or wherever.”

I looked at my watch. It was six-thirty. I was hungry and lonely and considered heading downtown to meet him.

Beep.

“It’s me.” A low male voice, smoky and depressive. Ace. “Haven’t talked to you in a couple of days. I’d like to see you. I have some things on my mind.”

Great. Another catalog of indictments his shrink was encouraging him to bring up against my parents—and me, I’m sure.

“Yeah,” I said to my empty apartment. “Looking forward to it.” I suddenly had the horrible thought that I’d liked my brother better when he was a junkie. Though he’d been equally depressive and blame-laying, he wasn’t nearly as self-reflective.

Beep.

“Hey, there, it’s Dennis. It was nice to hear your voice. Give me a call back when you can.” That Times sportswriter I dated briefly. He sounded enthusiastic. I knew he worked late usually, so I took a chance, went into my office, looked up his number, and gave him a call. I forced myself to sound light and flirty when he answered, gave him the same spiel I gave Jenna about wanting to return Myra Lyall’s call.

“A very weird, scary thing,” he said when he’d finished telling me basically all the same stuff Jenna had revealed.

“That’s terrible, Dennis,” I said. I let a beat pass. “Do you know her assistant well? I got a call from her as well—what’s her name again?” Lie.

“Sarah Duvall.”

“Right.”

“Yeah, she comes out for drinks every once in a while with my crew. Nice girl. She’s a bit adrift at the moment. No one knows if Myra is coming back, but no one wants to admit that she isn’t, so Sarah’s in a kind of professional limbo. It’s been weird for her.”

There was an awkward silence on the phone. I remembered how Dennis and I went out together one night and he got so drunk over dinner at Union Square Café that he halfway passed out against the wall at a club we visited later. I literally had to support him as we stumbled to the street and deposited him in a cab while he tried to lick my neck. It was a bit of a turnoff.

“So…” he said finally. “Feel like getting together?”

“Sure,” I said. “Let me look at my schedule next week and I’ll give you a call back.”

“Great,” he said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

We hung up, both of us knowing that I had no intention of doing any such thing.

I had a strange sense of unease as I hung up the phone, as if there were eyes peering at the back of my neck. I spun around in my chair and confronted the emptiness behind me. I walked through my apartment, but there was nothing I could point to, nothing I could say might have been moved. I wondered if I was being paranoid, but something just didn’t feel right. The energy was off and I couldn’t wait to get out of the apartment.

10

I am a pathetically bad runner. I’m not built for it. No speed, no endurance. But I still managed to elude Dylan Grace, though only, I suspected, because he didn’t get up and chase me with any real determination…and because I managed to hail a cab before he made it to the street.

“Ridley, don’t be stupid!” he yelled.

I waved to him as the cab sped off.

“You shouldn’t run away from your boyfriend,” the cabdriver admonished. I looked at the ID plate: Obi Umbabwai. He had a heavy African accent. “There aren’t that many good men around.”

I gave him a dark look in the rearview mirror.

“Where are we going?” he asked after he’d driven south a block or two.

“I don’t know yet,” I answered. “Just drive around a minute.”

“You must be rich,” he said.

“Just drive please, sir,” I said. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and dialed the number I’d taken off of Grant’s website. I prayed not to get voice mail as the phone rang. It was one-thirty.

“Go,” he answered.

“I need to see you,” I said.

There was a pause. “Do I know you?”

“Yeah, are you kidding? We met last night at Yaffa. You said you wanted to see me again.”

He started to protest. Then he got it. Not too quick on the draw for a conspiracy theorist. He probably met his buddies on Thursday nights to play Dungeons & Dragons; that’s probably as close as he’d come to any real intrigue.

“Oh, yeah,” he said reverently. “Glad you called.”

“Can you meet me right now?”

“Now?” he said, sounding surprised and a little uncertain.

“Now or never. I’m not a person with a lot of time.”

Another pause. His breathing sounded heavy, excited. “Where?”

I told him where to meet me and hung up. I figured I was probably making his day or even his year. I repeated my destination to the cabdriver, who gave me a disapproving look in the mirror.

“Whatever you say, honey.”

My cell phone rang and I saw Dylan’s number on the screen. I pressed the button and put the phone to one ear but didn’t say anything.

“Ridley, you are making a major mistake,” he said. “Do you really want to be a fucking fugitive?”

I could tell by the pitch of his voice and by the fact that he’d resorted to cursing that he was really upset. I hung up and closed my eyes, leaned back against the faux leather interior of the spotlessly clean cab, and let it speed me toward Times Square.

11

I’ve always been attractive—not hot, not gorgeous, but pretty enough to get along, not so beautiful as to attract undue attention. Weirdly, I’ve always been grateful for this. I was never one to wish I looked like the girls in the Victoria’s Secret catalog, with their jutting bones and vamping eyes, or the models on magazine covers, with their airbrushed beauty. I never primped or starved or strutted for male attention—attempts I’ve always found to be somewhat sad and desperate in other women. My mother always said, “You are the one to do the choosing, dear. Not the one who waits to be chosen.” She knew something that most women don’t seem to know anymore, that an awareness of your own worth is the most attractive quality in the world. That a woman centered and secure in her own power need never starve herself or subject herself to self-mutilating surgeries, may not even choose to hide her grays. She’ll always have the kind of beauty that age and changing fads can’t touch.

My mother also said, “If you do things to cheapen yourself, men will think they can have you cheaply and then discard you.” These things included dyeing my hair, getting a henna tattoo, wearing midriff tops and fishnet stockings. Even when I resented these restrictions, even as I railed against them, I think I heard the truth in what she was saying. I was thinking about this because of the leering glances I drew on the street with my new platinum-blond hair peeking out of my cap. I wasn’t used to being leered at on the street, really. I mean, this is New York, and there’s always some lowlife catcalling or making a disgusting noise as you pass. But the most I might get from the average man is a quick glance or a smile. As I walked up Broadway toward the subway, men stared at me with odd looks and disrespectful grins. I walked faster and had to keep myself from running my hand through my hair. Was it the blond hair dye? Or was there something about me now that showed my fear and desperation?

I jogged down the stairs into the Times Square station and waited for the 1 or the 9. When a train came, I got on and walked through the cars to find the emptiest one, then sunk into a seat on the far end in the corner and closed my eyes.

I felt someone sit next to me and I scooched over toward the wall, kept my eyes shut.

“It’s an interesting look for you. A little bit Madonna, the Vogue years.”

I opened my eyes. Jake with an amused smile. I didn’t know whether to slap him or hug him. I opted for the latter. He held me tight, as tight as I held him.

“I’m sorry,” he said into my ear with a low whisper. “I’m sorry.”

We got off the train at 191st Street and found a Cuban coffee shop in the bustle of the busy Inwood neighborhood. It’s the tip of Manhattan, not quite the Bronx but close enough. The train is elevated here and the streets a grimy mix of mom-and-pop restaurants and Laundromats, bodegas and apartment buildings. It’s a fairly safe working-class area but close enough to the bad stuff that liquor stores are gated, their clerks behind bulletproof glass. There’s a heavily Latino influence in this area, which means the coffee is fantastic and the aromas of roast pork, rice and beans, and garlic are in the air.

We found a table toward the back, and I took off my ridiculous glasses.

“They think you killed Esme,” I said.

“And you’re wanted for questioning in the murder of that Times assistant,” he answered, “and escaping NYPD custody.”

He seemed tired and pale but his eyes were bright. There was an edginess to him that was unfamiliar. The waitress came and we ordered café con leche and Cuban toast.

“I wasn’t anywhere near Esme Gray yesterday,” he said. “Last time I saw her was when I confronted her about Max.”

“What about the blood in the studio?”

He shook his head. “I came back to the studio last night, hoping you’d meet me. The door was open. I knew I hadn’t left it open, so I slipped into Tompkins Square Park. I thought I’d stop you before you went upstairs, but I looked away for a second, and when I saw you, you were moving so fast, I didn’t get to you in time. I was about to follow you in when I saw the feds making their move. I hung back. Eventually I saw you leave with one of them. I bolted.”

“You could have called,” I said sullenly. “I’ve been sick about you. I left about a hundred messages.”

He held up his cell phone. “Battery’s dead. And I knew they’ve been watching you and your phone. I figured it was better if I just tried to tag you on the street somewhere.”

I nodded, looked down at the table. I noticed that he didn’t seem surprised about the blood in the studio, that he didn’t ask any questions about what else I had seen there or what the feds (if that’s what they were) had found. I didn’t ask him why he wasn’t even curious.

“I almost didn’t recognize you,” he said, lifting his hand to my hair. “Why’d you do that to yourself? You should just turn yourself in. This is crazy.”

“I can’t,” I answered, running one hand over my head, feeling the stiff, spiky pieces.

“Why not?”

“You know why.”

“He’s dead, Ridley.”

“You don’t believe that. And even if he is…I still—” I found I couldn’t finish my sentence.

“You still what?”

“I still need to know who he was. You of all people should understand that.”

He reached across the table and grabbed both of my hands. I looked into his beautiful face, those sea-glass green eyes, the soft lines at their corners, the dark stubble on his perfect jaw. His mouth was the most delicious shade of pink, like raspberry candy. I felt that physical pull to him.

He lowered his eyes for a minute, then raised them to me again.

“I was thinking about what Esme said. About changing our names and getting as far away from here as possible. Maybe we could do that. You and me. We could go anywhere in the world. Just start over. Start our own family. Just disappear. I want to let go. I want to move on. I feel like I’ve wasted so much of my life with this thing, with all the anger. It’s possible, isn’t it, just to walk away?”

Everything inside me wanted to tell him yes, yes, it is possible, and let’s go. We could open some kind of tiki bar in the Caribbean or find an olive farm in Tuscany. I’ll shift off my lousy family and the nightmare of Max and who he might have been. We’ll have children and tell them we were both orphans, no family at all. They’d never be touched by the poison in each of our pasts. They’d have a clean slate. It sounded like a beautiful idea and for a split second I could almost believe it was possible. But we can’t do that, can we? You can cut the ties that bind but not without losing a part of yourself. You can walk away and hide from the people who made you, but you’ll always hear them calling your name. At least that’s true for me.

I didn’t say any of these things. But I know he saw my emotions play out on my face. He released my hands and leaned back in his chair. He started working his nail against a corner of laminate that was coming off the table. I saw him abandon his fantasy with a long exhale.

“So what now?” he asked. I didn’t hear disappointment, only resignation, in his voice, as though he’d already known it wasn’t possible for us. I hesitated only briefly before I told him about the text message, my meeting at the Cloisters. About Grant and the phone call I had to make.

“You saw it, too,” I said. “The website. It was up on your computer. There was streaming video of a street in London. How did you log on?”

He shook his head. “I never saw it. I told you, I didn’t go back to the studio that night.” There was something oddly still about his face and I wasn’t sure if I believed him. But I nodded. “And you didn’t send that text message?”

He shook his head. “No, of course not.” After a beat: “Who do you think sent you this message, Ridley? Who are you expecting to find up there?”

I didn’t know the answer to that. Did I expect to go and find Max waiting for me with answers to every question I had about him in my heart? That his answers would enable me to make peace with who he was and what he had done? Maybe part of me thought that might happen. But a larger part of me had no idea, wasn’t even convinced that this was such a good idea. I know: duh.

We were there, Jake and I, in that place where silence is an answer, where you know each other so well that some questions don’t require a response.

I took a sip of my coffee and kept my eyes on the door to the street, as I had done since arriving.

“I need you to promise me something,” I said.

“What?”

“If he’s alive, if we find him, I need to know you won’t hurt him.”

He gave me a flat look. “Is that what you think? That I want revenge on Max Smiley?”

“Isn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything for a second, just lifted his eyes to the ceiling. Then: “Why are you so interested in protecting him?”

“He’s my father,” I said.

“He’s your biological father,” he said, shifting forward in his seat.

“Yes. That counts for something. There are things I need from him even now, just like there are things you need from your biological parents. You get that, right?”

He nodded slowly. “I get that.” Then: “The thing I’m most interested in is protecting you, Ridley. I don’t want to see you get hurt. That’s my only agenda.”

“What do you need to protect me from?” I asked.

“Mostly from yourself. I’m trying to keep you from getting in over your head.”

“Are you being purposely vague? What aren’t you telling me?”

We had a staring contest then, which he lost. He cast his eyes to the table and didn’t look up again. Jake seemed like a black box to me sometimes. I had the feeling that I wouldn’t know everything there was to know about him until our lives were in a burning wreckage all around us.

“Call your Web guy,” suggested Jake after a minute of silence. “We might at least have a better idea of what we’re walking into.”

He hadn’t answered my questions. He hadn’t given me the promise I’d asked for. I was starting to regret that I’d told him about the meeting at all.

I took the phone from my pocket and noticed that the charge was dangerously low. I dialed each of the numbers Grant had given me and got voice mail. I was surprised; I imagined him waiting by the phone for my call. A dark sense of worry started to settle on me.

“No answer?” said Jake.

I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, then glanced at the clock over the counter. Just two hours to go. Jake seemed edgy suddenly, kept looking over his shoulder toward the door and around the restaurant.

“Let’s get out of here. It’s better to keep moving.”

12

I awoke in a milky darkness that told me morning wasn’t far off. My head pounded in a way that would seem natural only after a suicidal drinking binge or a minor car accident. The pain was so intense, I barely dared to move. Then I was aware of a bayonet of agony in my right side. I couldn’t orient myself. I held back the urge to vomit. The room around me was one I didn’t recognize. A hotel room—I could tell that much—posh and well-decorated with oatmeal walls and a rich bloodred carpet. The comforter on top of me was a bone-colored suede, the pillowcases fine cotton. Fear sat on my chest and pushed down on my lungs. I saw a dark wood bedside table where a small clock glowed 5:48 A.M. The room smelled of lavender.

I struggled to sit up but my head and my side wouldn’t allow it. My throat was painfully sore and dry. I reached my arm out and pulled the phone to my ear with difficulty and pushed zero.

“Good morning, Ms. Jones. How can I help you?” A brisk male voice, British.

“Where am I?” I croaked. Was I dreaming?

He gave a light chuckle. “Quite a night, eh? You’re at the Covent Garden Hotel. In London, ma’am.”

Images danced in my mind then. High stone walls and strange men moving in from a glade of trees. I heard gunfire and the sound of my own screaming. I saw Jake falling. I saw blood, lots of blood. The man I’d seen on the street when Sarah Duvall was murdered moved closer, but I couldn’t see his face. Over and over he asked me, “Where’s the ghost? Where’s the ghost?” I didn’t have time to be horrified, to wonder whether these images were memories or dreams. I blacked out again.

13

Jung believed that one of the major reasons for violence against women was an unintegrated anima, or the archetypical feminine symbolism within a man’s unconscious. He believed that all men have feminine characteristics and all women have masculine characteristics. Men, however, have been taught that the feminine parts of themselves are shameful and must be repressed. The result of this suppression has been a kind of global misogyny, soulless sexual encounters, and whole cultures where women are unsafe in their own homes. It’s part of Jung’s theories about the shadow side, the dark part of ourselves that we strive to hide and destroy, only to be confronted by it again and again, usually in the form of an “other.” He believed that this aspect of the human psyche was the root of all racism, cultural bias, and gender hatred, that the us-against-them mentality was a thinking pattern exhibited by those who had not embraced their shadows, who projected the hated parts of their being onto a group of people they believed to be opposite to themselves.

I’m the girl with my homework done and my pajamas on, watching Max ride his bicycle up and down the street. It’s late and cold but I’m darkly envious of his freedom. I wonder if he’s darkly envious of my Howdy Doody pajamas and freshly washed face. Maybe we are the same. Maybe we are each other’s shadows.

I awaken to sirens and these strange thoughts and this image of Max in my head. New York City sirens and London sirens are so different. London sirens with their waxing and waning seem so much more polite. Coming through, they seem to plead. Stand aside. New York City sirens are boldly insistent, downright rude. What the hell are you waiting for? they want to know. Get out of the goddamn way. Can’t you see this is an emergency? When you live in New York, you live with the sound of sirens in the periphery of your consciousness. Ambulances, fire trucks, police cars—it seems like there’s always someone in trouble in the city, always someone racing to the rescue. You stop hearing it; it becomes part of the city music.

London sirens seem mournful. They seem to say Something awful has happened and we’ll respond the best we can, though it’s probably too late. New York sirens are brazenly sure that they can save the day.

It was a London siren I heard, waxing and waning, fading off into the distance. It took me a second to realize that I was in a hospital room, cool and quiet. It was dim, with some light coming in through a small glass window in the door and from between the drawn blinds and window frames—not from sunlight but from street lamps. I didn’t know what time it was.

I lay still, scanning the room with my eyes. As they adjusted, I noticed the thin-framed woman sitting in a chair by the door. A rectangle of light fell across her. She had white-blond hair and a wide mouth that sloped dramatically at both corners in a caricature of a pout. In spite of the fact that she was slightly slumped to the side, leaning her head on her hand, she looked put-together and officious in a navy blue suit and sensible low-heeled pumps. She stared at the wall, a million miles away.

I cleared my throat and shifted myself up a bit. I was aware of a terrible dryness in my mouth and reached for the water pitcher I saw by my bed. The woman quickly got to her feet to stand beside me. She poured me a glass of water and handed it to me.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

Under the circumstances, it was a difficult question to answer.

“It depends,” I said, my voice sounding hoarse and raw.

She looked at me quizzically.

“On where I am, on how I got here. On what’s wrong with me.”

I was trying for cool and smart-ass, but I felt hollow deep in my core.

She politely averted her eyes while I tried to drink from the cup in my shaking hand. Then she reached out to steady my wrist and things went better.

“I was hoping,” she said, “that you’d be able to answer some of those questions for me.” Her accent was thick, heavily Cockney though I could tell she struggled to keep that to a minimum.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Inspector Madeline Ellsinore. I’m investigating your case.”

“My case?” I said, putting the water down on the table and leaning back.

“Well, yes,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest and resting her eyes on my face. “An American woman shows up at a London hotel and checks herself in, hangs the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on her door for two days. The only time anyone hears from her is when she calls to find out where she is. She’s then discovered to be suffering from a badly infected gunshot wound when she stumbles into the lobby at the end of the second day. She collapses and is rushed to the nearest hospital. Though she has sufficient ID, passport, cash, and credit, there is no record of her arriving in London on any commercial flight in the past six months. I’d say that warrants an open case, wouldn’t you?”

I nodded slowly. She was official but not unkind. Her eyes were a pale blue. She was small, petite as she was thin; she looked like a runner, a fast and strong one.

“How did you get to England, Ms. Jones? And what are you doing here?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea.”

It’s a weird thing to admit. Have you ever woken up one morning after a night of drinking and found yourself in a strange apartment, a strange person sleeping beside you? It’s like that but much, much worse. I felt as if I’d woken up in someone else’s body.

She blinked at me twice. “That’s hard to believe,” she said finally.

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s true.”

She gave me a blank, assessing look. There was something cold and robotic about her in spite of her prettiness, in spite of her soft, smoky voice.

“Who shot you, then?” she asked matter-of-factly, as though she’d settle for that small bit of information as consolation.

I shook my head again. The ground had fallen away beneath my feet and I was floating in a life that didn’t belong to me.

“Are you aware, Ms. Jones, that you’re a ‘person of interest’ with the New York City Police Department, wanted for questioning in relation to the murder of a Sarah Duvall?”

That morning came rushing back to me, how Sarah fell and died in front of me, how I chased the man in black and was apprehended by the police. Dylan Grace came to get me and took me to Riverside Park, where I fled from him. It had all gone worse from there. I thought of Grant and his stupid website. Jake falling. I grasped for what had happened to us after the helicopter rose from nowhere, drowning us in light and sound. The harder I thought about it, the further it slipped away. I felt a terrible nausea, a pain behind my eyes.

“The FBI would like a go with you as well, in connection with a man named Dylan Grace.”

I thought about the things he’d told me in the park. More lies? How could I be sure? Had he been in my hotel room or was that a dream? I remembered that he’d looked bad himself, that he’d jabbed me with a needle. I shook my head again.

“You really don’t know what happened to you, do you?” she asked, incredulous, handing me a tissue from the box by my bed. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose. I entertained flashes of memory: running with Jake along the stone wall at the Cloisters, gunshots cracking the night air, falling hard to the ground as if I’d been shoved, the dark shadow of a man whose face I couldn’t see asking, “Where’s the ghost?” Most of all, I knew there was pain—white hot, total, nearly indescribable in its intensity, the kind of pain that mercifully kills memory.

“No,” I said finally. “I really don’t.”

But between you and me, that wasn’t the whole truth. Memories were filing back quickly. I remembered a knee on my back, a black hood being placed over my head. I just couldn’t make sense of anything. It was a nightmarish jumble.

“Does the name Myra Lyall mean anything to you?”

I nodded my head slowly.

“An American crime reporter with the New York Times,” she said. “She had some connection to you, if I’m not mistaken. She wanted to talk to you regarding an article she was working on about Project Rescue. Then she disappeared.”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Sarah Duvall was her assistant.”

I nodded again.

“We found Myra Lyall’s body yesterday in a canal about a mile from King’s Cross, one of our red-light districts. She was in a trunk. In pieces.”

I think she doled out the information like that for maximum impact. I tried to think about what she said in abstracts, not in logistics. Still the nausea and the shaking, which had been diminishing, returned with a vengeance.

“No record of her travel to London, either,” she said.

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. I felt some combination of grief for Myra Lyall’s end and terror at how it had happened. I wondered how I had made it to a plush Covent Garden hotel and she had wound up in a trunk in a London canal. In pieces.

“Ms. Jones, if you have the first idea what’s going on, I strongly recommend that you share what you know with me,” she said. She walked over to the chair by the door and pulled it up beside my bed, sat down slowly as if she were settling in for a nice long chat. “I can’t help you and I can’t protect you if you don’t. You seem like a nice girl, yeah? You seem frightened and I certainly don’t blame you. But a lot of people are dead, and from the look of you, it’s just luck that you’re not one of them. Maybe we can help each other.”

I didn’t ask for this. Not for any of it, I’d said to Ace.

Are you sure about that? he’d wanted to know.

I decided finally that I was out of my league. I asked to see her identification, which she offered to me without hesitation. Fool me once, you know? When I’d determined that she was who she said she was, I told Inspector Ellsinore everything—everything I could remember, anyway. While we talked, various nurses and doctors made their appearances, poking and shining lights in my eyes, checking and then changing the bandage on the wound at my side.

Inspector Ellsinore took copious notes. When I had finished giving my statement, I asked her to help me contact the American embassy. She did and they promised to send a lawyer to the hospital.

When the call was finished, she put a hand on my arm and said, “You’ve done the right thing, Ridley. Everything is going to be fine.”

I gave her an uncertain nod. “What happens now?”

She looked at her watch. “You get some rest. I’ll contact the U.S. authorities and let them know that you’re cooperating. And tomorrow we’ll figure out when and how we can get you home. Is there anyone there you want me to call?”

My parents were cavorting around Europe, snapping pictures and sending postcards. They could probably be here in a matter of hours, but I didn’t want them. Ace was clearly incapable of offering any help or support. I didn’t even think he had a passport. I had no idea where Jake was or if he was okay. The thought of him brought tears to my eyes, and a now-familiar feeling of panic regarding his well-being and whereabouts.

“No. Just if you find out anything about Jake Jacobsen, I need to know. Please.”

“I’ll see what I can find out. Try not to worry.”

She left her card on the table beside my bed, gathered up her things, and walked toward the door. With her hand on the knob, she turned back to me. “And I’m sorry, Ridley, but there are two officers outside this door. As much for your protection—”

“As for my detention,” I finished her sentence.

She nodded. “Just until we’re sure of what has happened to you, how you got here. You understand. So just stay put for tonight. Rest up. You have a busy couple of days ahead of you, I suspect.”

14

I felt frozen in the sound of the helicopter all around us. Jake pulled me and we kept running along the wall, staying close to the stone. The ground beside us spit and splintered with the shots fired from above. They were shooting at us; I couldn’t believe it. I glanced behind us. The men I’d heard were nowhere in sight. Where were they? The fact that I couldn’t see them made me more nervous than if they’d been at our heels. What if they were corralling us like sheep, if they turned up ahead of us somehow?

“It can’t follow us into the trees!” Jake screamed back at me, pointing to where the wall ended and a thick wooded area began and ran all the way down to the highway. We could move through the sloping tree cover all the way down to the Henry Hudson. His voice sounded like a whisper in the deafening sound of the helicopter, but I heard him and nodded. We ran balls out toward what I prayed would be safety. When we reached the corner where the south wall hit the east wall, he climbed it quickly and then helped me up.

Not easy. I fell once and tried again, finally made it over the top. I think if it hadn’t been for the sheer adrenaline of terror, I never would have made it over at all. I kind of climbed and then fell off the wall on the other side. Jake dropped down more gracefully beside me. We heard the copter retreat but stay close by. We listened. No voices, no footfalls.

“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I’m sorry I brought us here.”

“No, Ridley. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry for? You were just trying to protect me,” I said, looking up at him. He dropped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close. I turned and wrapped my arms around him, rested my face against his neck.

“I’ve realized something in the last few days,” he said. His voice sounded so grave and serious. “Ridley, I can walk away. It’s nothing more than a single choice. We can both do it. We don’t need all the answers to live our lives. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

He put his mouth to mine and he tasted so good. I could taste all the delicious possibilities of our life together. In that moment, I believed him. I believed he was right.

“If we get out of this,” he whispered in my ear, “I promise you everything is going to be different. I swear to you, Ridley. I swear it.”

We held each other like that until something started to slice the air around us like a razor through fabric. We stood to run but I watched as Jake’s shoulder jerked and red seeped through his jacket, then through his pants leg. He reached out to me as he fell backward. I screamed his name and stretched for his hand. Then I felt a searing heat in my side, fell forward with as much force as if someone had shoved me hard from behind. I saw his face grow pale and still. I tasted blood and dirt in my mouth.

15

We are not our parents. We’re not. You’ve probably heard all your life that the traits you’ve found so annoying in your mother or your father will eventually manifest themselves in your own personality. Maybe you even believe it. Personally, I think it’s bullshit. It’s a cop-out, something people tell themselves to feel better about not taking responsibility for their lives. Maybe if you go through your life without examining yourself, without dealing with your issues, without consciously deciding what to bring forward and what to leave behind, or if you can’t take responsibility for your own inner happiness, then perhaps it is likely that you become the drunk, the abuser, the cold and distant judge your mother or your father was. But I believe you have a choice. I believe we all choose our lives, that our existence is the sum of our choices—the little ones, the big ones. We don’t always choose what happens to us, and we don’t choose where we came from, but we do choose how we react to the events of our lives. We choose to be destroyed or to grow wiser. Nietzsche (whom I always thought was a bit of a psychopath) said, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” I cling to this philosophy; I need to believe it.

I have to believe now that I am not my father. That his DNA is not a contagion I carry in my body, a sleeper virus that might take hold of me one day and turn the blood in my veins to poison.

I think Dylan gave me an hour with the file and then returned to the room, sat back beside me. The file was open in my lap. There was more to read but I’d lost my nerve. I couldn’t bring myself to turn the page. In my mind, I saw Max standing over his mother’s beaten body, smiling ghoulishly. I saw him waiting outside Nick’s window staring up with soulless eyes, his very presence a terrible threat. I saw him punching my brother in the face with his closed fist.

“I’m sorry,” Dylan said.

I stared at the flames, which were flickering low. The air around me was growing colder. I could hardly believe the things I’d read, the photographs I’d seen. I tried to fit my brain around them, tried to make it work, but I felt like I do when I see images of grinding poverty or war on the television. You know it’s real but part of you just can’t accept what you’re seeing, so removed are you from the actual experience.

“I don’t know this man,” I said.

He nodded; he understood what I meant.

“Why did you show this to me?” I asked him mildly. It seemed as if someone was always handing me a file filled with bad news. I was starting to resent it.

He was quiet for a moment, just stared at the floor between his feet.

“We’ve talked about this before. I think you’re the only way to him.”

I remembered then our conversation that first day.

Do you know the number one reason why people in the witness protection program get found by their enemies and wind up dead?

Why?

Love.

Love.

They can’t stay away. They can’t help but make that call or show up incognito at a wedding or a funeral. I’ve seen his apartment. It’s practically a shrine to you. Max Smiley did some terrible things in his life, hurt a lot of people. But if he loved anyone, it was you.

I knew it was true. It had always been true. Max and I were connected. We would always find each other.

“You want to use me as bait,” I said without emotion.

“The truth is, Ridley, you’ve been bait for a while. We just haven’t had any bites until recently.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Jake Jacobsen has been using you since before he met you,” he said softly.

“It might have started out that way,” I admitted. “He wanted to get to Ben.”

Dylan shook his head, lowered his eyes to the floor again. The conversation seemed to pain him.

“He saw my picture in the Post,” I said, leaning forward. Something in my chest started to thump. “Same as Christian Luna did. It was a coincidence. He needed my help.”

“You think that’s how he found you?”

That day on the Brooklyn Bridge (it seemed like a lifetime ago) when Jake finally told me the truth (part of it, anyway), he admitted that he’d moved into my building to get close to me, to find a way to get closer to Ben. He needed to know more about Project Rescue and couldn’t think of another way. I’d forgiven him for that—a long time ago. I told Dylan as much.

“Think about it, Ridley. When did Jake move into that building?”

I searched my memory for something that might orient the event in the time line of my recent life. I thought of the morning I’d saved Justin Wheeler. Two things had delayed me in getting out of the building. First there was my mailbox overstuffed with bills and magazines and an angry note from my mailman. I’d retrieved the mail from my box and run it back up to my apartment. But before that, it had been my elderly neighbor Victoria. She stopped me to talk about the noisy man moving in upstairs. I felt my stomach bottom out as I remembered the conversation. It was a week later that Jake and I met face-to-face. As it came back to me, the present disappeared and all the events of our meeting and what followed swirled around me.

Our meeting and the passion and the drama that had followed had been so intense, so all-consuming. Maybe that’s why I never made the connection. Or maybe I just didn’t want to. I realized now the point Dylan was trying to make: Jake moved into my building the night before the single event that forever altered my world.

Was it possible? What did it mean? I’m not sure how long I sat there, analyzing the time line, trying to figure out a way that I might be wrong. A thick fog moved into my brain.

I had to force the words out. “Are you saying that he knew who I was…before I did?”

Dylan hung his head.

“How is that possible?” I felt so ashamed suddenly, like the kid who’d been the butt of a terrible joke at school, around whom everyone had gathered to laugh. I felt my face grow hot.

Acceptance was slow. Then, when I realized that it was true, I tried to think of something to make it all right that he’d lied to me about how he’d found me, a reason he would have to make up a false scenario as he did. Pathetic, I know. Anyway, I couldn’t think of anything. Then I started to wonder: If he’d lied about how he found me, what else had he lied about? I thought about the things Jake had told me. How he’d tracked Max to a bar in Jersey and confronted him about Project Rescue. How just a few weeks later Max was dead.

I’d come to believe that it had been Max’s realization of how much harm he’d done that led him to drink so much the night he died—that in a sense Max had killed himself by drinking and driving off that bridge. But the man in the dossier was not a man to die over the grief of others. The man in the dossier didn’t have a conscience at all. Did that mean Jake had something more to do with his death than I’d believed? Or something more to do with Max than he’d revealed? The possibilities were chilling.

“A lot of what you know about Jake is true, I think,” Dylan said kindly. “He didn’t make up the stuff about his childhood, about his quest to find out who he really is and where he came from.”

“How do you know?” I said angrily. “How do you know all this about Jake?”

“Because I’ve been watching him for years.”

I looked at him sitting there.

“Why?” I asked him.

He smiled at me sadly. The answer was clear. I spoke for him.

“Because he’s been watching me, waiting for Max to approach me. He never believed Max died that night, and he believed that one day Max would reach out for me, try to contact me. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“And when Max did, Jake would be sleeping beside you,” said Dylan. “He knew he’d be the first person you told.”

I felt as if someone was stepping on my chest. I thought of all my nights with Jake and all the love I’d had for him. The idea that it had all been a part of some design, or something to do to pass the time as he waited for Max to make contact, sliced me open.

“And you’d be listening when I did.”

He shrugged again. “Max Smiley is a man with the means, the resources, and the motives to drop off the face of the earth forever. As far as we know, he only has one weakness, one place in his heart that feels.”

I didn’t have to ask who or what that was. I thought about the patience it must have taken to wait day after day for Max to contact me, how badly Jake must have wanted it.

“I’ve never understood Jake’s obsession. All this time, I thought it was just his needing to know what happened to him, his wanting to bring Max and the other people responsible for Project Rescue to justice. I thought he just wanted some closure. But there has to be more to it than that.”

“That’s probably how it started.”

“Then?”

“My guess is that the more he learned about Max, the more obsessed he became with finding him. I think his obsession grew beyond his personal quest for answers. I think the search for Max became his whole reason for living. Eventually it started to define him.”

I could see how that might happen; in fact, I could feel it happening to me. But at the same time, Dylan’s answer didn’t quite work for me. I realized then that Jake’s obsession had seemed out-sized for months; it had grown in a way that had felt incongruous. Early in our relationship, I’d believed that it would lessen over time, but the opposite had happened. It was one thing for me to be obsessed; the man was my father.

“I guess you know a thing or two about obsession,” I said.

I thought about the crime-scene photos I’d seen in the dossier. I’d seen what Max did to Dylan’s mother. I understood Dylan better now.

“I guess I do.”

“You turned yours into a career.”

He shrugged. “It’s a living.” He tried for a smile but it died on his face. I, for one, wondered if I’d ever smile again.

“How did Jake know I was Max’s daughter?”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just knew that Max had loved you.”

“Then why would he lie about how he found me?”

“I can’t answer that.”

There was so much more to ask, so many questions about the last couple of years and the last couple of weeks. We hadn’t scratched the surface. But I sat there for a minute before launching into all that. I wanted to ask about the men at the Cloisters, how I’d wound up in London, and whom he had killed in the hospital. I was afraid that once I started, the answers would only lead to more questions.

“Myra Lyall is dead,” I said. “They found her body floating in a trunk in a canal.”

Dylan nodded. “I know.”

“What did she find out? The people who took her—are they the same people who took me?”

“I’m not sure, Ridley. I don’t know what happened to either one of you. I was hoping you could answer some of those questions.”

I frowned at him. I guess I kind of had the idea that the only reason I didn’t end up in a trunk floating is that Dylan Grace had saved my ass, as he so eloquently put it. Wrong again.

“Then how did you find me?”

16

We went to Knightsbridge for some new clothes for me, using the cash I’d discovered in my bag. Dylan trailed around after me, edgy and watchful, while I, in under an hour, got myself a pair of black jeans and a black suede jacket at Lucky (ripped and faded and beat to hell for a ridiculous sum, but oh so fab), a pair of pull-on Doc Martens boots (think skinhead chic), and a ribbed black lightweight sweater with a zip-up neck at Armani. I felt better after shopping, more normal. And more than that I looked cool, which almost made up for being in mortal danger, an international fugitive, and a partial amnesiac.

You’re thinking it was an unlikely time for me to be shopping, that there were bigger fish to fry. And you’re probably right. But sometimes you have to pull yourself together on the outside to pull yourself together on the inside.

My hair was growing on me, figuratively speaking, though I wondered if I should change it again. I opted for a ski hat and sunglasses instead. It’s pretty traumatic to cut and dye your hair if you’ve never done anything like that, and I’d had enough trauma to last me a while.

Besides, since I hadn’t seen myself on television or in the papers, I’d lulled myself into a false sense of security that we wouldn’t be spotted by the police. Of course, I managed not to think about the fact that there were probably more dangerous people looking for me. Who knows, maybe I wanted to get caught. I was feeling pretty low, pretty disconnected from myself. I think numb is a good word for it. I was numb—except for the injury in my side, from which radiated a low-grade pain controlled somewhat with whatever pills Dylan was giving me.

17

It occurred to me as we exited the fat black taxi that I had no idea what we were looking for exactly at this club. I’d found a name scrawled in a matchbook and here we were. That should tell you how lost and desperate we were. The industrial street in London’s West End was nearly deserted. I paid the driver and shut the door, felt something like despair as the car pulled away and was gone.

“What is it?” asked Dylan, sensing my hesitation.

“Nothing. I’m good.”

As we walked together I had the odd feeling that we were making some kind of mistake, as if it was just stubbornness and a lack of good alternatives that had led us here. I felt Dylan’s energy go quiet and watchful as we moved up the street scanning numbers. There were no other clubgoers on the street; I didn’t hear the pulse of music.

A glowing blue light over brushed metal doors was the only indication that we’d found the place. Two men—one black, one white, both big as refrigerators and clad in long black nero jackets and black sunglasses—stood sentry at the door.

“Name,” asked the black guy curtly as we approached. He reached for a clipboard that hung beside him.

I handed him the matchbook in my pocket. “Am I in the right place?”

He pulled what looked to be a pen from his pocket, but it turned out to be a small black light. He shined the beam on the matchbook and another symbol appeared. I craned my neck to see what it was, but he flicked off the light before I could identify it. I was a little surprised when he handed it back to me, stood aside, and opened the door.

“Welcome to the Kiss. The elevator to your left will take you to the VIP room. Just swipe this card in the slot,” he said, handing me a black key card. I took it from him and nodded my thanks. The doors closed behind us and we walked down a long dark corridor lit by more blue lights.

“You’re a pretty cool customer, Ridley Jones,” Dylan whispered as we reached the end of the corridor and swiped the card.

I gave him a weak smile. “We’ll see.”

The elevator took us down instead of up as I expected. When the doors opened, we entered a cavernous space where techno music pulsed and bodies heaved on a gigantic dance floor. There seemed to be no end to it, this sea of scantily clad bodies. I was overwhelmed with the same feeling I had at New York City clubs. My observer’s mind almost couldn’t handle all the input. The tattoos, the body piercing, one woman’s purple contact lenses, another’s raspberry-colored spiked hair. I felt instantly assaulted by the level of detail, started to get this weird zoned-out feeling I get under these circumstances. Dylan took my arm and pulled me close and we moved toward the bar.

“I don’t want to get separated in here,” he yelled in my ear, and even then I could barely make out what he was saying. I wondered if, under different conditions, he’d dance with me, if he’d move that body on the dance floor with as much grace and rhythm as he had in bed. I had a feeling he might. He looked pretty cool with his tousled black hair and dark glasses, the shadow on his jaw. He wore a leather jacket and an FCUK T-shirt I’d bought him in Knightsbridge, a pair of old Levi’s. When we’d first met, I never would have pegged him as being particularly hip, but I guess he was.

“What?” he yelled.

I must have been staring at him. I shook my head.

The bartender’s bottom lip was completely hidden beneath a row of silver hoop piercings. It was absolutely ghastly. I distrust people who pierce themselves in tender places. Isn’t life painful enough? Doesn’t it leave enough scars? He had a shaved head and the tattoo of a black four-leaf clover under his eye.

Dylan leaned over the bar and started yelling something at the bartender. I lost myself watching the crowd. The music was heavy; I could feel it beneath my skin. I remembered back in college when we’d take Ecstasy and go dancing, how the music seemed to pulse through my veins, take me over on some spiritual level. I didn’t do too much experimenting with drugs after that. I found I never liked the feeling of being disconnected from reality. But dancing with Ecstasy altering the pathways in your brain was pretty intense, a memory that club music can always bring back for me. I felt the itch to get out there and mingle with all those bodies in the flashing strobes, to lose myself in the music.

I watched a black woman with razor-straight platinum-blond hair in a patent-leather dress and matching boots rub her fantastic body against an equally gorgeous blonde in a white tunic covered in some gauzy material that got picked up by the fans. The material swept around her like smoke. I watched a badly dressed man with thinning hair and insecurity in his eyes try to pick up a redheaded women who looked profoundly bored and slightly unstable on her feet. I watched a young girl in jeans and a tank top dancing alone, whirling around to no particular beat other than the one she was hearing in her own head. I could see in her glazed-over stare that she was as high as could be.

Dylan handed me a beer and pointed to a narrow staircase that led to a velvet curtain.

“Angel!” he yelled.

I nodded and we headed that way.

18

Up until recently, my life has been pretty uneventful. Not to say that I was just plodding along until a single event turned my world on its axis. But now that you mention it, that’s not too far off. As I sat in a cold gray room, lit horribly with flickering fluorescent bulbs, I thought about that moment when I raced into the street to save Justin Wheeler. Dylan was right. Part of me would go back and change it all if I could. But I know now that all of this was set in motion long before that day. I had been laboring under the delusion that I had some control over my life. I was only beginning to understand that it wasn’t true.

He walked into the room and closed the door. He didn’t say anything as he sat across the table from me. I couldn’t bring myself to raise my eyes. His betrayal was so profound, so incomprehensible, that in that moment I was afraid I’d burst into flames if I looked at him.

“Ridley,” he said finally.

“Was it all lies? Everything?”

He didn’t answer for a second. Then: “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry?”

“I have cared for you, Ridley,” he said in a voice I didn’t recognize. There was something so cold and officious about him, especially in this place, in this setting. “I still do. You know that. But that wasn’t part of the plan. It was a contingency I never planned for, a complication.”

“A mistake,” I said. Did he say “care for”? Like you care for the environment or care for an aging aunt? I thought of all the love I’d felt for this man, all the times I’d given him my body and my heart, my deepest trust; all the truths I’d revealed, all the painful confidences I’d shared. I’d sliced myself open and bared it all. I felt a deep sense of shame, a desire to cover my nakedness before him.

“Not a mistake,” he said softly, more like the man I knew. I felt his hand on mine and I pulled it back quickly. I mustered my strength and looked up. He seemed tired and sad, with dark circles under his eyes, the line of his mouth straight and firm.

“Don’t ever put your hands on me again,” I said.

He hung his head. I couldn’t have hated him more.

“I just need to be clear,” I said. “Everything about you—your personal history as a Project Rescue baby, our relationship, your sculpture, everything I know about you as a person—all of it just lies? Just a cover story?”

He nodded slowly. “Yes.”

I felt a wave of nausea so strong, I swear I thought I was going to puke right there. But I managed to hold it in. I tasted that dark beer I’d had a while ago. It tasted like the truth, bitter and acidic on the back of my throat.

“Why?” I asked, hearing the desperation in my own voice.

“You know why.”

I shook my head. “No. You didn’t need to deceive me so personally to find Max. You could have had me under surveillance, watched me from a distance. I never would have known.”

He didn’t answer me, let me think about it. And then I understood.

“You needed to be able to manipulate me. Keep the issues alive for me, plant little seeds here and there, show me that file. You got to know me well enough to push my buttons, to get me chasing when the time was right.”

I was happy to see shame and regret on his face, but it didn’t even come close to being enough. So many things that had never made sense to me were so obvious to me now: Jake’s obsession with Max, how he always found me wherever I was, how he always seemed to know what I was thinking, how he managed to stoke the flames of my curiosity, always keeping the past alive. Nearly two years of this. Suddenly I didn’t feel so bad about sleeping with Dylan.

I thought about our last moments together at the Cuban place in the Bronx and at the Cloisters over the wall.

“Those things you said to me the last time we were together. Those promises you made. Why would you say those things?”

He shook his head and I saw his eyes go damp. He got up and walked over to a narrow window that was laced with wire mesh. I understood. It wasn’t all lies. There was something real between us. But it was irretrievable now. In those last moments, he must have known that the time was coming. In his way, he tried to save us. Somehow that just made it all worse.

“So it was the CIA that night. They sent the text message. They chased us at the Cloisters. They brought me to London.”

He shook his head. “No,” he said.

“Then who?”

“We think Max sent the message. If you’d gone alone that night, you might have seen him.”

I thought about the car that had slowly pulled up the drive, about the men in the trees. Had he been in the back of the sedan? Lurking in the woods?

“So those were your men that night? The CIA came to take Max in.”

He shook his head again. I wasn’t very good at this, I guess.

“There are a lot of people, a lot of very bad people, looking for Max. I don’t know if they were following you or if they intercepted the text message, but they got there before my men did.”

“Grant,” I said quietly. “I told Grant Webster where I was going and when I’d be there. That’s how they found out.”

“Maybe,” he said with a slow nod.

I hung my head, wondering if they had tortured him to find out. I remember how excited he’d been to be involved in all the intrigue.

“So who brought me to London?” I asked after a while. “How did my passport and all that cash get into my bag?”

“There are a number of suspects,” he said vaguely.

“Like who?” I pressed.

He didn’t say anything, just looked at me hard. I got mad.

“They tortured me!” I yelled, standing and lifting my shirt so that he could see my wound, the bruises on my body. “I didn’t know anything about Max. I didn’t even know they called him the Ghost. I didn’t even know what they were asking me.”

He said sharply, “I had nothing to do with that. I tried to protect you, Ridley. And I failed.” He pulled at the neck of his sweater and exposed a thick bandage on his shoulder. I remembered watching him get shot. I remembered him falling. The memory made me dizzy. I looked into the green facets of his eyes for I don’t know how long. To his credit, he didn’t look away. I don’t know what I was looking for there, but I’ll tell you that I didn’t find it. I didn’t understand him or how he could have done what he did—or how I could have believed so totally the lie that he was. There we were, showing each other our wounds. I’m not sure what either one of us was trying to prove. I lowered my shirt and sat back down. He did the same.

“I never would have been a part of that,” he said.

“Oh, but you were. You were the biggest part of it.”

The silence that followed between us was a live wire.

“Why didn’t they kill me?” I asked him finally. “When they figured out I didn’t know where Max was, why would they let me live? How did I get to that hotel?”

He sighed. “Everyone wants the same thing from you, Ridley.”

He put his hand on a file that lay between us on the table. I’d been so distracted I hadn’t noticed it. He opened it and slid out a photograph, pushed it toward me. I recognized him right away. The man on the plane with the scars on his face. The same man who’d killed Sarah Duvall. He was ghoulishly ugly, with pale eyes that seemed lidless, a wide, thin mouth and oddly shaped nose. Those scars—burns, I think. He had the look of a man who’d suffered terrible agony, and it had made him evil. I shuddered. I didn’t think I’d ever forget the sound of his voice.

“Who is he?”

“His name is Boris Hammacher.”

I waited for him to go on but he didn’t. Why did I feel as if I was always trying to pull information out of people? Couldn’t anyone just ever tell me what I needed to know?

“And?” I said.

“And he’s an assassin, for lack of a better word. He’s the guy you call when you want someone found and killed.”

“He’s looking for Max?” I asked.

He nodded. “I think it’s safe to operate under that assumption.”

“He let me live because he thought Max would come for me.”

“That would be my guess.”

Notice how slippery he is, how he never confirms or denies anything? It’s possible he just didn’t know the answers to my questions, but more likely he just didn’t want to answer them.

“He’s the one I saw on the street,” I said, taking the photograph in my hand. I remembered chasing him, how fast he’d been. “He killed Sarah Duvall. Why? She didn’t know anything.”

Jake got up and paced the room. “I don’t know, Ridley. I don’t know if he was following her or following you. Maybe he thought she knew something about Myra’s disappearance, maybe he wasn’t sure what kind of clues Myra had left behind. Maybe he thought she was a loose end. Or maybe he was trying to terrorize you.”

“Did he kill Myra Lyall?” I asked.

“Myra Lyall got information she shouldn’t have. As you know, she was researching an article on some Project Rescue babies, and someone leaked information to her about the CIA belief that Max Smiley was still alive. She started asking a lot of questions at the agency. She paid Esme Gray a visit. She was just fishing, though. As far as we know, she didn’t have any real information. We believe Boris Hammacher thought she knew more than she did. When she didn’t, he killed her.”

“Who is he working for? Who’s trying to find Max?”

“It could be any number of people. Max had a lot of enemies.”

I thought about all of this for a second. I thought about how Myra, Sarah, and Grant were all dead because of Max and how the only reason I hadn’t joined them was because everyone was banking on the likelihood that Max would be coming for me someday.

“Who killed Esme Gray?”

“Esme Gray is alive.”

“But…”

He walked over to the table, sat back down.

“Didn’t you ever wonder how she escaped prosecution? Didn’t it seem strange to you that no one ever paid for Project Rescue? She came to us when Max tried to contact her. She brokered a deal for herself and for her son. She obtained immunity in exchange for her help in locating Max Smiley. Her son, Zack, will be out of prison within the next five years.”

This information was unpleasant. But in comparison to everything else, it didn’t seem like such a big deal that a man who’d tried to kill me and who still hated me might be out on the street fairly soon.

“So why fake her death?”

“She made mistakes in her dealings with you. She’d let you have too much information by mentioning Myra Lyall. Dylan Grace was harassing her. She’d been working with us since we realized she’d falsely identified Max Smiley’s body, and so she knew a lot about the investigation. She was showing signs of stress at all the deception. She had a paranoia that Max would discover her betrayal and come for her. We were afraid she was a weak link, that she might snap if pulled too hard. So we removed her from the field.”

“Was it on purpose that you chose a beating death for her? That’s the way the FBI claims Max killed people.”

He shrugged. “We just needed her face to be unrecognizable.”

I didn’t say anything. I just gave him a look that I hope communicated how much he disgusted me on so many levels.

“What about DNA and fingerprints, dental records? You can’t just mash up someone’s face and call it a day anymore.”

“The CIA took over the investigation so that we could handle all of that. Happens for witness protection all the time.”

We were both quiet for a while. There were so many questions. Some of them I wanted the answers to, some of them I didn’t. I didn’t even know where to go next. Finally: “Okay, so where is he?”

“We know now that he’s not in London. He probably hasn’t been in years. That image you saw had been superimposed on that street scene. Computer graphics. He could be anywhere in the world.”

He could be anywhere in the world but he was alive. I was filled with dread and fury and, yes, the slightest glimmer of hope.

“Then why are we all here?”

“Like us, Boris Hammacher thought that Max was here. We suspect that’s why he brought you here. And we followed Dylan Grace to you.”

“Because everybody wants the same thing from me.”

I thought of all these people circling like vultures the rotting carrion that was my life, all of them waiting for Max to make his move so that they could make theirs. But Max never came. I’d been shot, abducted, tortured, left to suffer alone in a foreign hotel room, brought to a hospital where another attempt was made on my life, abducted again, run all over London, and finally arrested. But Max never came. I guess the joke was on them. Or me.

I knew that even this conversation was probably fraught with lies and half-truths, but I also knew that it was the first nearly honest conversation I’d ever had with the man before me. It made me sad. I felt so tired suddenly, as if I could sleep for days. I was envious of Rip van Winkle. I wanted a hundred-year nap, where I woke and everything I hated and loved had turned to dust.

“So what is it? Why does everyone want Max Smiley so badly? Why is everyone looking for the Ghost?”

Jake’s face was as still as stone.

“The murders he’s suspected of committing?”

No answer.

“No,” I said into the silence. “No one cares about a few prostitutes. Though I imagine a couple of dead Interpol agents might cause some international difficulties. Still, it has to be more than that. It has to be more than just one man.”

“Max Smiley is more than just a man,” said Jake. “He’s the linchpin in an international web of criminal activity. He has been for decades.”

“What kind of criminal activity?”

“It’s complicated, Ridley.”

“We have time, don’t we?”

He sighed, leaned back in his chair. “It started with Project Rescue. He and Esme Gray conceived of this way to get kids out of abusive homes and into the homes of the wealthy. Through Alexander Harriman, Max aligned himself with the Italian-American Mafia to get the dirty work done.”

“I know all of this,” I said impatiently.

He lifted a hand. “The enterprise became quite lucrative. It grew.”

“But when things started to get ugly the night Teresa Stone was murdered, Max extracted himself, right?” I said. My heart started to race. I felt eager to cling to the story Alexander Harriman, Max’s late lawyer, had told me.

Jake looked at me as though he pitied me. I must have seemed like a child to him, clinging to my fairy tales.

“If he had, Ridley, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

I didn’t say anything. What could I say?

“Max Smiley was a businessman. There was money to be made and a lot of it. Project Rescue faded away, yes, but the connections Max had made led him into other arenas.”

I remembered the articles about the sex slave trade from Albania I’d read in Jake’s file. And I knew. I wanted to cover my ears to keep from hearing the rest.

“It’s not such a big leap from stealing babies and selling them to the rich to luring women and girls from clubs and selling them into slavery,” he said.

I put my head in my hands. “What are you saying?” I asked through my fingers. “How was he involved with that? What did he do?”

“We believe he financed the building of nightclubs in Europe that were run by Albanian gangs. In these clubs, mostly in places like the Balkans, the Ukraine, women were lured with the promise of good-paying jobs in the U.K. or the U.S., or they were simply drugged and abducted, then trafficked with false documents to other countries in Europe, the U.S., and Asia. One of the clubs you visited yourself, the Kiss.”

He glanced over at me quickly, then away again.

“He took a cut of the profits, both legal and illegal. Of course, there was the added benefit of having places to feed his appetites with no fear of discovery. These women are literally disappeared. False documents are created for them, they are injected with heroin to make them addicts, no one ever hears from them again. What particular monster they’ve fallen prey to matters not at all.”

The room around me tilted unpleasantly.

“Isn’t it possible that he didn’t know what was going on in those clubs?” I asked.

I asked this though I already knew the answer. I was having a hard time understanding how a man who’d spent a great deal of his life raising money for abused women and children through his foundation could be involved with organizations that made their money selling young women and girls into sexual slavery. It didn’t compute…like so many things. I remembered what Dylan had said, screamed at me, rather, in the car. Wake up, Ridley. Wake the fuck up. Your father, your beloved Max, hated women. He murdered them.

He didn’t answer my question, just went on.

“In the commission of this business, Max Smiley dealt with some of the key players in the sex slave trade. If we manage to find and capture him, get him to talk, the CIA along with other international law enforcement agencies could cripple or severely damage some of their operations, save countless women, and possibly force principals to face charges in international courts. Do you understand, Ridley?”

I thought about the photos I’d seen. Max with these men, smiling with mobsters and terrorists in Paris cafés. I started to get that feeling I get when everything is closing in on me and panic starts to set in. My breathing suddenly felt labored and white spots danced before my eyes.

“Ridley,” said Jake, who, in spite of everything, knew me quite well, “don’t pass out.”

He called out toward the door, “Get her some water, please.”

He came and kneeled beside me. Another man entered with a small bottle of water and handed it to Jake. He cracked the lid and handed it to me. I sipped from it and focused on a spot on the wall. I had been humiliated enough for one lifetime to pass out when God knows how many people were staring at me on a closed-circuit screen. All I could think was, Do things like this happen to people?

“Ridley, just hold it together, okay? It’s going to be okay.”

I wasn’t sure how he could say such a ridiculous thing.

“Why should I?” I wanted to know. “Why should I hold it together?”

“Because, Ridley, I need your help.”

“My help? Don’t be ridiculous.”

He didn’t say anything, just released a breath and looked at the floor, rested his hand on the back of my chair. I took a few more sips of the water he gave me, kept staring at the spot on the wall that was helping me hold on to consciousness.

“My help with what?” I asked finally, curiosity getting the better of me.

“I need you to help us bring Max Smiley in.”

I almost laughed until I saw that he was deadly serious. I also saw that I had no choice. That, in fact, I never had.

19

About fifteen hours later, I watched my father, Ben (not Max), on a closed-circuit television screen. He was being questioned by two CIA agents: a man, tall with dark buzz-cut hair, and a woman, Latino and small, with burning coals for eyes, both wearing conservative blue suits. I noticed that he didn’t look scared at all, that he leaned back in his chair and had his arms folded across his chest. That his face was stern, his eyes disdainful. He’d admitted to communicating with Max. But he didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with that.

“It’s not a crime to disappear from your life, is it?” he asked.

“That’s not his crime, Mr. Jones,” said the female agent. She leaned against the wall.

“You have no proof, no evidence, that your other allegations against him are true,” my father said with his signature huff. “If you had, you would have brought him in long ago.”

I had to admit that I’d had the same thought. I’d brought it up with Jake, who’d told me that they’d never had enough solid evidence to scare him into giving up the men with whom he’d done business. They could have had him on hiding assets, possibly tax evasion, but they wanted him on charges that, if proven, might lead to the death penalty, which was the only way they figured they’d get him to bargain. Otherwise, a few years in a federal prison would be a cakewalk compared to what some of his associates might have done to him—or to the people he loved. They’d never get him to turn. So they watched and waited. But the longer it went on, the more ethereal he became, the less they saw of him, the more careful he was about his dealings. He turned to vapor before their eyes. And then he “died.” That’s why they started calling him the Ghost.

They’d been at my father for hours. But all they’d managed to get from him was an admission that he’d received a communication from Max about a year and a half after his death with instructions on how to decode messages in the red website. My father told them that he checked the website nearly daily and received communications maybe once every few months. The communications were vague—questions about me, about the rest of the family. Max never once said where he was, and Ben knew better than to ask.

“I didn’t understand why he’d do such a thing, cause us all so much grief,” my father said, “but I figured he had his reasons and I respected that.”

The male agent shook his head, sat down across from my father, and leaned in. His face was a mask of disdain.

“You respected that? Do you mean to tell us that in all your years of knowing Max Smiley, you never suspected what he might be capable of, that he might be a murderer, that his business dealings contributed to the destruction of human lives? That he disappeared because it was all starting to catch up with him? He left you and Esme Gray to take the rap for Project Rescue. He nearly destroyed your adopted daughter’s life—almost got her killed, in fact. And still you protected him.”

My father turned away from the agent’s hard gaze.

“I try to see the best in the people I love,” he said. “I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.”

He sounded defensive, nearly delusional. I was embarrassed for him. I felt ashamed and angry. My cheeks were hot and I sat down in the chair. Jake, who’d been standing behind me, put a hand on my shoulder. I shook him off.

“I told you not to touch me again,” I snapped. I felt him shift back from me. I hated him. I hated my father. I hated everyone.

“What does he have on you, Mr. Jones?” the female agent asked with a shake of her head.

My father flinched. “I have nothing left to say. I want an attorney.”

She gave a little laugh and looked at him with mock sympathy. “We’re with the CIA, Mr. Jones. The usual rules don’t apply.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked. He started to look afraid for the first time. I saw a sheen of sweat on his brow; he gripped the edge of the table and sat forward.

“It means that you don’t have the right to an attorney. It means that we can hold you indefinitely if we believe you are a risk to national security. Max Smiley was a known associate of terrorist organizations. You have had contact with him. That makes you at best a witness, at worst an accomplice.”

My father was silent. He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Was it loyalty or fear that kept him protecting Max? I didn’t know.

I turned to Jake. I couldn’t look at my father anymore. “What happens to me now?”

“Nothing,” he said. “We let you go. You live your life, go about your business.”

I looked at him. “In the meantime, you watch every move I make, every phone call, every e-mail. I live in a fishbowl.”

He gave me a grave nod. “Then,” he said, “after a few weeks, using the log-in you obtained from Angel, you try to reach Max. We’ll go from there.”

“And Dylan?”

Jake nodded again. “All charges and reprimands against him have been dropped,” he said, handing me a document. “As per the terms of your agreement.”

“He goes back to work?” I asked, scanning the page. I’d read it and signed it a few hours earlier.

Jake shook his head. “No. We weren’t able to arrange that. He’s been terminated from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The guy is a loaded gun.”

I couldn’t help but stare at Jake. He didn’t seem that different to me. Weird, after everything. He still seemed like Jake. Though he wore a suit and had a cool professionalism to him, I could still see the man I’d known for the last year. I felt as if something in my chest was splitting in half.

“And you?”

“You never have to see me again.”

The thought gave me a little jolt. I saw that he could do just that. He could walk away from me as if he’d never made love to me, never held my hand, never listened to all my secrets. Maybe he didn’t want to, maybe somewhere within him it would cause him pain, but he could do it. He would do it.

“But you’ll be there, listening and watching,” I said, thinking about how strange and sad that would be.

“Until we find Smiley. Then I disappear.” He was frowning, looked stiff around the shoulders. I hoped it meant that he was in pain.

“Fine,” I said, standing.

“Do you want to hear the rest of Ben’s interview?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve heard enough. From everyone. I want to go home.”

We’d been back in the States since late the night before. After I agreed to help them, Jake and I got on a commercial flight with a couple of other agents and returned to New York. I’d been with the CIA ever since. I wasn’t sure where in the city we were. I’d come to this location in the back of an unmarked white van with no windows. I hadn’t seen Dylan since the Internet café in London.

I’d spent a few hours in a clinic where a doctor cleaned and dressed my wound and gave me some kind of antibiotic shot. He also gave me a course of antibiotics for the road. And some painkillers, which I hadn’t taken yet. I wanted to be clearheaded.

Jake walked me down long white corridors lined with gray doors. We exited from the building into an underground garage and climbed into another van. Or the same van, who knows. There was a driver at the wheel, and as soon as Jake slammed the door, the van started moving. Sitting in the back beside me, he handed me a cell phone equipped with instant messaging and e-mail access. It was pretty cool looking, slick and flat. He told me how everything was preprogrammed for me to reach them.

“Keep this on you at all times. You’ll have five minutes to return calls, e-mails, or instant messages from us. If you exceed that time, someone will come for you.”

“To protect me or take me into custody?”

“Well, that depends upon the reason for your delay in responding.”

I nodded my understanding.

“Remember, Ridley,” he said after he’d finished with his various instructions—don’t play my music too loud, don’t expose the phone to moisture, don’t loiter in cell phone dead zones, use stairs instead of elevators whenever possible (I didn’t ask why)—“we may not be the only people watching you. You won’t see us, you won’t hear us, you won’t know we’re there. If you do suspect that someone might be following you, if you hear strange clicks or static on your phone, even if the screen on your computer monitor starts to act up, you need to let us know.”

“Okay,” I said. I was struck again with how bizarre this whole thing was. I thought that Grant would have gotten a kick out of it all. I personally had never been so depressed in all my life. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d listen to me going to the bathroom. This was a weird thing to wonder, I know.

I must have dozed off a little because the next thing I knew, we were coming to a stop. I sat there for a second, then looked at Jake. The look on his face communicated the gravity of my situation. He was worried—whether it was because he thought I couldn’t handle it, or he was afraid, even with all their surveillance, that he might not be able to keep any harm from coming to me, or he just grieved for all that was lost between us, I didn’t know.

“Ridley,” he said as he swung the door open for me. “Be careful.”

I waited until I climbed over him and out of the van and came to stand on the sidewalk before I responded.

“This is never going to work, you know.”

“We’ll see,” he said. We locked eyes for a second. I’m not sure what he saw there, but it caused him to shift closer to me.

“Ridley,” he said, his voice a warning, “just follow the program, okay?”

“What choice do I have?” I said, and walked toward my building. He closed the door without another word and the van sped off. I moved quickly inside and was glad not to see anyone in the lobby or in the elevator. I’d barely made it into my apartment before I started sobbing. I knew they could hear me and I didn’t care; I just let it all out, all the pain and fear and anxiety, into the cushions on my couch. When I felt better I ordered enough Chinese food for four people from Young Chow on Fourth Avenue and took the hottest shower I could take without scalding myself.

When the food came, I ate it in front of the television set, flipping mindlessly through the channels. I didn’t see a thing on the screen in front of me as I wolfed down egg rolls and wonton soup and sesame chicken. I was starving, absolutely ravenous. When I was totally stuffed, I took my antibiotics and three of the pain pills the doctor had given me. I ignored the message machine blinking beside the phone. I got into bed and slept for nearly twelve hours.

When I woke in the bright light of late morning, I expected to feel better. But I didn’t. I felt utterly lost. Those black fingers of depression that had been pulling and tugging closed around me like a shroud. I spent the better part of the morning staring at a water stain on the ceiling over my couch.

20

I rolled over and looked at Dylan. He opened his eyes. I suspected he hadn’t been sleeping any more than I had. Maybe his mind was churning with a million thoughts of his own. I turned on the radio beside the bed and hiked up the volume a little. Not loud enough to arouse suspicion, I hoped.

“I’ve been thinking,” I whispered in his ear.

“What a surprise,” he answered with a slow smile. I was starting to enjoy the shades of his accent.

We got dressed quietly and headed out into the hallway.

“How did he know we’d wind up logging into that website with Angel’s password?” I said when we were outside. “How could he possibly have known?”

“I wondered the same thing. Maybe he knows you that well,” he answered, leaning against the banister.

I shook my head. “Too many variables. There were too many factors involved in my getting to London.” The tile floor was cold beneath my bare feet. I felt chilled and wrapped my arms around myself.

“But maybe you would have wound up there, anyway. Maybe you would have figured out where that club was without my help. Maybe you would have gone to London without the assistance of whoever it was that brought you there.”

He was confirming what I already suspected, but I wanted to play devil’s advocate, to see if I might be wrong.

“But I wouldn’t have tortured the information out of that woman,” I said.

“Maybe she would have given it to you, anyway.”

“Why? How?”

He was silent for a second, kept his eyes on me.

“Because she was meant to tell me? Because he was leaving me clues, luring me there?” I said.

“It’s possible, isn’t it? Starting with the photos, then the phone calls, the incident in his apartment where you thought you could smell his cologne, that someone had used the shower. The matchbook you found. Then the text message.”

“You think he sent that message?” I guess I thought so, too.

He shrugged. “Who else?”

No one else. Max had been reaching out to me from beyond the grave, drawing me closer to him. It must have killed him (no pun intended) to know I’d discovered he was my father, to wonder what else I might be discovering about him. He would have wanted his chance to talk to me, to make me understand.

“Love,” Dylan said, echoing our first conversation. “He loves you.”

I wondered if that was true. Could someone like Max really love in the truest sense of the word? If he really loved me, wouldn’t he have let me be, rather than drag me into all of this? Love lets go; it doesn’t hold on with a death grip. It doesn’t drag you down into the grave with it.

I took the key from my pocket and showed it to him.

“I think I know what this key unlocks,” I said.

“What?”

LUNCHTIME AT Five Roses Pizza in the East Village is a bustle of students and cops and other East Village dwellers looking for the best slice of pizza in the city. Those of you who have been with me from the beginning know that this is where it all started, that it was out in front of this pizzeria, the ground floor of the building where I lived at the time, that I leapt into traffic to save a little boy.

I walked in the front door and barely heard the little bell that announced my arrival over the din of diners eating meatball Parmesan heros, calzones dripping with sauce and cheese, and Zelda’s special Sicilian slices. The aromas of garlic and warm crust and tomatoes made my stomach growl.

Zelda, the cranky owner of the place, manned the counter, moving with grace and speed between the huge ovens and the old cash register. She’d helped me once before. In all the years I’d lived there, we’d never had a conversation that didn’t involve my rent or my order of two slices and a soda. Then one day when I was in a desperate situation, she helped me escape the police. I wouldn’t be surprised now if she threw me out of the place when she saw me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she helped me again.

When it was my turn, she regarded me without interest, as if she still saw me every day.

“TwoslicesandaCoke?” she said, her heavily accented words all running together into one unintelligible mumble.

“No, Zelda.”

She wiped her hands on her apron and placed them on her hips. She gave me a look that made me think of my mother. “You in trouble again?”

I’m not sure how she knew that. But she actually seemed as if she might care for half a second. I heard someone behind me sigh and start to grumble about the holdup.

“Because I don’t want no trouble. You know that.”

I leaned into her and lowered my voice. “I just want to use the bathroom.”

She looked at me skeptically, then gave me a quick nod. We both knew I didn’t have to use the bathroom, but she leaned over and lifted up the counter for me to go behind.

“Thanks, Zelda,” I said as I moved past her, over the rubber-mesh grating on the floor and through the kitchen, where huge vats of sauce simmered on the stove tops and a legion of stromboli baked in an oven. I really wished I had time for lunch.

“You know where it is,” she called to me, following me with her eyes.

I waved to tell her I did. She shook her head as I exited into the hallway and went out into the courtyard. Zelda’s three dogs greeted me noisily, jumping enthusiastically, and I smelled the aroma of pastry wafting out from the ventilation system of Veniero’s on Eleventh Street. I moved toward the doors in the ground and pulled one of them open, walked down the stairs that led to the basement, and closed the door behind me, leaving the dogs baying mournfully in my wake. I was in the storage space where Zelda kept all of her supplies—olive oil, crates of garlic, flour—lining shelves that seemed to go on forever. It was dark and I didn’t bother to flip on the light. I felt my way along the wall until I found what I was looking for. It was a doorway that led to a tunnel. This tunnel ran behind the buildings to the north of Five Roses and let out onto Eleventh Street. I unbolted the door and paused at the yawning darkness before me. I remembered it was a long tunnel, dark and cold. I felt along the wall for a light switch and instead found a flashlight on a hook. I took it and turned it on, shone it into the darkness. The beam was dim and weak, flickering in a threat to go dark just seconds after I turned it on. It was so quiet.

I took the cell phone Jake had given me and dropped it on the floor. Dylan suspected that it had some kind of tracking device they could use to follow my movements around the city. I was hoping they’d think I was just having a long, leisurely lunch at Five Roses, and that by the time they’d figured it out, it would be too late.

Why did I do this? I’d made a deal with the CIA and good sense would have dictated that I keep it. At the time, I probably couldn’t have told you why I didn’t. I have more insight into my actions now. But that afternoon, I was just overcome with the feeling that if I didn’t get away from them, I’d never be able to find Max. He’d know they were watching me. He’d know to stay away. I knew him well enough to know that he wouldn’t walk into an obvious trap. Alone, I might have a chance to find him. What would happen then, I didn’t know.

I hesitated at the mouth of the tunnel. The looming blackness got the better of me for a second and the air felt electric with bad possibilities. I thought about turning around and going back the way I’d come in, rather than face that pitch black, but I finally steeled myself and ran, the low light of the flashlight illuminating only a foot or two in front and around me. I breathed easier when the beam fell on the metal door at the end of the tunnel. I reached for the bolt and found it stuck. My breathing started to become labored as I tried and failed to unlock it. I felt the blackness of the tunnel closing in on me, and for a second I thought of screaming, unable to face the tunnel again to return to the basement. Finally it gave way and I burst onto the street.

I was disoriented by the bright light of the outdoors. A woman looked at me strangely as she moved quickly past on Rollerblades. I let the door shut behind me and turned back to look at it. There was no knob or handle on the outside. I wouldn’t have been able to open it again if I wanted to. I felt a twist of guilt and fear in my belly at what I’d just done, at what I was about to do.

21

When I look back on some of the mistakes I’ve made in all this, I think probably dropping that phone in the tunnel beneath Five Roses had the direst consequences. Like I said, at the time I probably couldn’t have even said why I did it. I told myself it was the only way to Max, that he’d never fall into such an obvious trap as the one the CIA had set. But I wonder if that was really the reason. I wonder if, on some level, I was suicidal.

I don’t mean that in the truest sense. I wasn’t looking for a bottle of sleeping pills or a dive off the Brooklyn Bridge. But maybe I was looking for a death of self. Maybe I was looking to burn Ridley Jones to the ground, in order to see what might rise from the ashes. It never occurred to me that there might not be a resurrection. That dead was dead.

In the dark warehouse, with Dylan’s breathing the only sound in my ears, I could see how the next few hours would play out with sickening clarity. I knew in a while they’d come to get us. We’d be taken somewhere desolate in the back of that van. When we reached our destination, we’d be killed. There was simply no other way for things to go. Once they had Max, or if he didn’t come for me, they’d have no use for us, and we’d make the awkward shift from assets to liabilities.

“They’re going to kill us,” I told Dylan, who’d been conscious and lucid for a while.

“Probably,” he agreed. “You’re bleeding. Stop struggling.”

My hands were numb. But the bindings on my ankles felt looser. They’d used only rope to tie my ankles to the chair. But that plastic thing on my wrists would not come free. It just slowly ratcheted tighter and tighter and I didn’t think I was getting any blood to my hands. It hurt terribly at first, then I stopped being able to feel my hands at all, except for a terrible burning around my wrists where I imagined the hard plastic was cutting into my skin. I felt the sticky warmth of my blood.

The door opened then, a rectangle of light at the far end of the space. Dutch and his associate approached us. The scarred man pointed a thick, flat gun at us as Dutch moved toward me with some kind of nasty-looking tool in his hand. He was behind me before I could even react. I saw Dylan crane his neck and, grimacing in pain, try to move his chair.

“I knew a man who very nearly severed both of his hands struggling against those bindings,” said Dutch as he used whatever he had in his hand to release the plastic on my wrists. I felt the blood start flowing back to my hands and it was actually painful. I held them out in front of me; they were paper white and didn’t even feel as if they belonged to me. Both wrists had nasty gashes.

“Now you tell me,” I said. My pending death was making me bold and sarcastic.

Dutch chuckled softly. “I always did like you so much, Miss Jones.”

I thought he’d go on to say how sorry he was that it had come to this, but he spared us the farce of that. Here was a man who didn’t care about anything except hiring out his services to the highest bidder. He didn’t seem inclined to pretend otherwise—which would have been refreshing if it wasn’t so terrifying.

He handed me the tool, which looked like a pair of thick wire cutters. “Free your friend and help him to his feet.”

I did this and Dylan leaned heavily on me, almost falling. I was able to support his weight but not easily. It took me a second to realize that the near-fall was a ruse to drop something in the pocket of my jacket. From the weight and feel of it, I determined it might be a pocketknife. I couldn’t imagine that the small knife in my pocket was going to be much help. Dylan and I locked eyes. I didn’t see fear in the expression on his face, not at all. It was something like defiance. His look asked me to be brave and to have hope, two things that had abandoned me a while back. I tried to dredge them back up from within. I had been an optimist once, a lifetime ago. I tried to remember what it felt like as we moved slowly through the heavy metal door and down the staircase toward the waiting van.

22

“Ridley, don’t do it. You’ll never be able to live with it.”

The voice comes from behind me and I spin around to see someone I didn’t expect to see again. It’s Jake.

“This is none of your business,” I yell, and turn back to Max.

It’s then that I realize why I’ve really been chasing him, what I really wanted to do once I’d found him. The thought makes me sick; I hold back vomit. He has continued to move closer. He moves through patches of light quickly, lowering his face. He either doesn’t see or doesn’t care that I have a gun aimed at him. Without wanting to, I start backing away just a bit.

“Ridley, don’t be stupid. Put that gun down.” Jake’s voice behind me sounds desperate, cracks with emotion. “You know I can’t let you kill him.”

My heart rate responds to the fear in his voice. What am I doing? Adrenaline is making my mouth dry, the back of my neck tingle. I can’t fire but I can’t lower the gun, either. I have the urge to scream in my fear and anger, my frustration and confusion, but it all lodges in my throat.

When Max is finally close enough to see, I gaze upon his face. And he’s someone I don’t recognize at all. I draw in a gasp as a wide, cruel smile spreads across his face. And then I get it. He is the man they say he is.

“Oh, God,” I say, lowering my gun. “Oh, no.”

Then for a second I see him. I look into his eyes and I see my uncle Max, the man who always found me and brought me home. He still resides in the eyes of this stranger. His face momentarily loses its cruelty and the little girl in me aches for him, wants nothing more than to run to him. Without thinking, I lower my gun and lift my hand to him. Our eyes lock briefly. Then night comes alive with sound and light, and he turns and runs.

Suddenly there are men all around me. Clad in body armor, guns drawn, they chase after Max’s fleeing form. His cane has been discarded and he runs faster than I would have ever imagined he could. Jake grabs my arm hard. His face is pale and strained in anger.

“Stay here!” he yells at me. I can see that he’s beyond furious. “Goddamn it, Ridley, don’t fucking move.”

He’s gone then, too. They’re all chasing Max. Dylan comes up behind me and I turn to him.

“I couldn’t do it,” I say. It’s only as the words pass my lips that I realize the reason for all of this was not because I wanted to find my father, but because I wanted to kill him. I didn’t want him alive in custody somewhere, helping the CIA end the sex slave trade. I wanted to cut him out of this world like a cancer, as if in doing so I could rid myself of every part of him that lived in me, good and bad. I guess I thought because I was his daughter, I had it in me to do that. Wrong again.

“Of course not,” he answers. He takes my face in both his hands. “You’re not him. You’ll never be anything like him.”

I hear the blades of a helicopter then and the sound of guns firing. We move quickly through the building toward the sound and come outside to find a black helicopter rising into the night. I see Max through the window and remember his wolfish smile. He lifts a hand and points to his heart, then he points to me. I know then that I’ll never see him again. As the helicopter grows smaller, I wonder what happened to the man I loved, if he ever existed at all.

Jake and the men with him continue to fire pointlessly at the helicopter long after it is out of range. Jake is screaming something into a cell phone as his eyes fall on me. He runs over to me.

“We’re going to get him tonight, Ridley. He can’t get far.”

I can’t tell if he thinks he’s issuing a threat or making a promise to me. Either way, I find I don’t care. I turn from him and into Dylan. I don’t want to look at Jake’s face ever again.

“The two of you are so fucked,” says Jake, moving closer to us. He’s in Dylan’s face. “How could you do this?”

Dylan pushes him back. “Step off, man.”

For a second, I think they’ll come to blows. In both their voices I can hear anger and frustration. But the heat between them fizzles out. It hurts to be so close to the thing you’ve been chasing and then have it snatched away. There’s nothing you can do about it. No one understands that better than me.

But as I look around me at the flat, dead island and into the sky at the fading lights of Max’s helicopter, I don’t feel their anger or their sadness. For the first time since I learned that I was Max’s daughter, I feel free.

23

Who was Max Smiley? Even now, I don’t know for sure. He was a shape shifter, he was whoever he had to be to control the situation. He was Nick Smiley’s worst nightmare, Ben Jones’s best friend, my beloved uncle. He was a murderer, a philanthropist, a real-estate magnate, a criminal directly and indirectly responsible for the enslavement and death of countless women. He was a man I loved and a man I hated. He was a man I feared and someone I’d never known at all. He was all these things equally and truly. He was my father.

The idea that we would sit and talk and he would answer for the things he’d done to me, to so many others, and that he’d show remorse, accept justice, do some kind of penance—it had been a child’s dream. A child who’s been injured by a parent waits her whole life for some acknowledgment of the wrong that’s been done, some validation from him that her pain is real, that he’s sorry and will make amends. The child will wait forever, unable to move forward, unable to forgive, without someone to acknowledge the past. In that powerlessness comes a terrible rage.

From that rage a darker, but equally childish, dream blossomed—one I didn’t even acknowledge until the gun was in my hand. But of course, Dylan was right: I didn’t have it in me. I didn’t have enough of Max in me. I couldn’t have lived with myself. I was the good girl with my homework done and my pajamas on. Besides, killing him wouldn’t have made him any less my father; it wouldn’t have killed the pieces of him that live inside me. What I needed was an exorcism.

I was thinking this as I sat alone in yet another interrogation room. They all seemed the same, these rooms with their harsh fluorescents and faux wood tables, hard metal and vinyl chairs. I was remarkably calm considering I had no idea what was going to happen to me now. I supposed it was possible that I’d be arrested—highly possible. I didn’t even have a lawyer. I remembered what they’d told my father about being able to hold him indefinitely, how the usual rights didn’t apply when it came to national security. I had a vivid fantasy of myself dressed in a gray jumpsuit and being moved through a network of secret CIA prisons around the world. Still, I felt an odd stillness. Probably just denial.

The door opened and Jake entered. He looked like hell, his face drawn. There were blue smudges of fatigue beneath his eyes. I felt my stomach twist at the sight of him. What did I feel? It’s so complicated. Such anger; such a deep sense of betrayal; and, yes, still love, too.

He sat across from me. “He’s gone. We lost him.”

I nodded. I wasn’t surprised.

“We weren’t able to mobilize the satellite cameras in time. He put the chopper down somewhere and took off in another vehicle…we assume.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I realized that I had a white-knuckled grip on the table in front of me; I forced myself to relax. However complicated my feelings were for Jake, they were about a million times more complicated when it came to Max.

“How could you do this, Ridley? What were you trying to prove?”

“I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I…” I said, letting the sentence trail off.

“You wanted to kill him,” said Jake blandly.

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” I said. “I thought so.”

He shook his head at me. He had such a look of disapproval on his face, I wanted to smack him.

“Don’t you look at me like that,” I said to him, all the heat of my anger rising to my face. “You’re the king of liars. The things you’ve done are a hundred times worse than anything I’ve done. How do you live with yourself?”

“I was doing my job,” he said weakly.

We sat there looking at each other in some kind of a sad standoff where he dropped his eyes first but we both lost. Then he reached under the table and I heard him flip two switches. The lights came on in the room behind the mirror and I saw that it was empty.

“It’s just you and me in here, Ridley. I turned the audio surveillance off.”

I wasn’t sure what he was getting at.

“What? Are you going to beat me up? Try to torture information out of me?”

“No,” he said, looking down at his hands. “I just need you to know that there was more between us than lies.”

“I’m not sure it matters now, Jake.”

“It does matter. It matters to me. I loved you, Ridley. That was the truth. I just need you to understand that. I still love you.”

I looked into his face and saw that he needed me to believe him. I was reminded strangely of my encounter with Christian Luna, a man who believed he was my father. I remember how he pleaded his case to me, how desperate he was for me to understand the man he was and why he’d done the things he had. He wanted my forgiveness. But it was all about him—what he wanted, what he needed in order to find peace with himself.

“Is that why you started distancing yourself toward the end?”

He nodded.

“You knew things were coming to a head and you backed away so that when I finally understood what had happened, it would hurt less. You drifted far enough away to distance yourself but stayed close enough to keep manipulating me.”

He hung his head here.

“Close enough to keep making love to me.”

He looked up quickly. “Every time I touched you it was real. Every time, Ridley.”

I heard a slight shake in his voice. And I believed that when we made love there was truth in it. But it just didn’t matter. The terrible lie that ran beneath our life together was a dark river that washed everything else away. I could never forgive him…maybe especially because I believed he did love me in the way that he could. I told him as much.

He nodded, leaned back a little in his chair. His face was grim and I could see his pain in the tight line of his mouth, in the corners of his eyes. I was sorry for every lie that had passed between us. We could have been together for a long time, maybe forever. But that was another life, another universe of possibility that didn’t even exist anymore.

“Look,” I said, wanting to get down to business. “Whatever happens to me now, I need someone to know that Dylan Grace had nothing to do with this. He got dragged along because I was stubborn and he was trying to save my ass.”

He looked at me and gave me a smile.

“Funny,” he said. “He said just the opposite—that he’d dragged you into this, convinced you to dump the phone and to help him find Max.”

“Well, he’s just trying to protect me. It was my fault. I deserve to take all the fire for this.”

He released a sigh and stood up. He walked over to the window and stared into the empty room across from us. I could see his reflection in the dark glass. “The truth is that I deserve to take all the fire for this.”

“You do? Why?”

“Because if I hadn’t given you this defective piece of equipment,” he said, pulling the cell phone I’d dumped in the tunnel beneath Five Roses from his pocket, “then we never would have lost you. And you wouldn’t have been vulnerable to abduction by Dutch Warren.”

“It wasn’t…,” I said. The look on his face caused me to clamp my mouth shut. I got it.

“It was my job to protect you and I failed at that. I’m sorry you almost wound up a permanent resident of Potter’s Field.”

I cringed at the thought.

“You’ve held up your end of the deal,” he said. “It’s not your fault things played out like they did.”

“And Dylan?”

“The terms of your agreement stand.”

He still had his back to me but I could see him watching me in the glass.

“Who was he working for?” I asked.

“Dutch Warren? We think he was working for a man named Hans Carmichael. He’s just one of the people looking for Max. The rumor is that Carmichael’s daughter was a drug addict and a prostitute, that Max killed her in London about ten years ago. He’s been seeking revenge ever since.”

I nodded, wondering if there was any end to the havoc Max had wrought. “Was Boris Hammacher working for the same man?”

“We think so.”

“And the man who tried to kill me in the hospital in London?”

“I’m not sure they would have killed you right away,” he said. “But the man Dylan killed in London was another known associate of Carmichael’s, so it’s a safe bet that they tried to abduct you in London and failed, thanks to Dylan Grace.” I thought I heard jealousy in his voice, but that might have just been wishful thinking on my part.

He came back to the table and sat down across from me. I found myself looking at his hands, thinking about all the places on my body they’d visited, how strong and tender they’d always been. That’s the weirdest thing about the end of love: All the physical intimacy is immediately revoked. I’d never hold those hands again, they’d never have a right to roam my skin. He was a stranger physically and emotionally, though I’d loved him just a short time ago.

He put the cell phone on the table.

“These things cost a fortune and they never work when you need them to,” he said with a smile that made my heart hurt.

“Well,” he said, “I’ll debrief you and then you’re free to go.”

“Why are you doing this?” I asked him. It was pretty surprising since I’d single-handedly destroyed everything he’d been working toward for years.

That smile again. “For old times’ sake, Ridley. You know?”

I didn’t answer him, just held his eyes a second longer, then gave a slow nod.

He flipped a switch under the table, to turn on the audio, I guessed. I told him everything that had happened in Max’s apartment and on Potter’s Field. He asked some questions here and there but it all went pretty quickly. When we were done, he stood up.

“I’m sorry, Ridley,” he said. I could see that he was. I was, too.

“Jake,” I said as he moved toward the door, “did you find the envelope?” I had told him I thought they left it on the boat.

He nodded, paused with his hand on the doorknob. I felt my heart flutter a little even as my stomach churned. As usual, I wanted to know as much as I didn’t. Part of me hoped there was something in there for me. I know. I’m screwed up.

“What was in it?” I asked finally.

“It’s confidential, Ridley.”

“I need to know, Jake.”

“Files,” he said. “Computer files.”

“Containing?”

“He basically betrayed everyone with whom he’s ever had illegal dealings. He gave up names, bank transactions, photographs. It would have taken a team of agents months, maybe a year, to compile so much data.”

“Why would he do that?”

“It’s genius, actually. Everything that we wanted him for is right at our fingertips now—names, dates, potential witnesses. We’ll be able to make real cases against some very bad people.”

“And the search for Max becomes less urgent.”

“He’s still one of our most-wanted fugitives. But, yes, likely some funding will be diverted to follow up these leads.”

I was silent. I didn’t know what to say.

“It was never just about him. I told you that,” Jake said.

“Was there information about Project Rescue?”

He hesitated, then gave a quick nod. “I can’t tell you anything about that, of course.”

“Of course,” I said. I wasn’t even sure I needed to know anything else about Project Rescue. Did the logistics of who did the dirty work really mean anything to me? I wondered how many of those children had wound up in good homes and how many of them wound up in hell. It was too much for me to consider. I felt a familiar numbness wash over me, a familiar fog move into my brain. What could I do?

I thought about my father, Ben. Why had he given me that key? Hadn’t he, in a sense, used me to help Max escape? Had it been intentional or was he trying to show me what Max really was? Or was he just following instructions from Max? I filed this away to be dealt with later.

“Was there anything for me?”

Jake shook his head. The expression on his face told me he couldn’t believe, after all of this, that part of me still wanted to hear from Max.

“Go home, Ridley,” said Jake, echoing Max’s final message to me. I didn’t know if it was intentional or not. But I took his advice.

24

The woods behind my parents’ house were just as I remembered them. It was cold, and as usual I wasn’t dressed for it. Another hour and the sun would be rising. Already I could see a silvery lightening of the horizon. As a child, I’d been frightened by these woods at night, my imagination turning slim black trees into witches, rocks into goblins, bushes into bogeymen. Tonight nothing scared me as I made my way through the thin tree cover. I could see the lights from the neighbor’s porch as I stepped over the creek bed, which was always dry in winter.

It was still there, just as we left it a lifetime ago, when it was the center of all our imaginary play. The fort that Ace and I had built seemed so small as I came to stand beside it. I was surprised at how tiny it was; I always remembered it large, as big as a car. Instead it was more like the size of a refrigerator box, maybe a little bigger. But for its size, the unstable little structure seemed solid and righteous. It had a place in these woods and in my memory; it would always be there.

Ridley, go home.

I climbed inside and sat on the cool dirt of the ground. It was just barely big enough for me. I had to scrunch up a little to fit. Outside, I could almost hear the sounds of my childhood summers: crickets chirping, the sparrows waking with the rising sun, off in the distance the sound of the trains going to and from the city. But this winter night was silent. And I felt profoundly how far I was from my childhood, from the girl who hid herself so that she could be sought after, found, and brought home.

It glowed, the whiteness of the envelope stuck between the rotting slats of wood. The paper was still clean and fresh; it hadn’t been there long. On its surface my name had been scrawled. I plucked it from its place, ripped the seal, and pulled out a single sheet of paper.

Epilogue

So, no, I didn’t shack up with Dylan Grace. I had grown smart enough to realize that after everything I’d been through, all the shape shifting I’d done, I needed time to get to know Ridley Jones. I had learned the hard way that I wasn’t Ben and Grace’s daughter, and I wasn’t Max and Teresa Stone’s daughter, but I was both of those things. And more than that, I was my own person forging my own path in this life. Nature, nurture, free will—it all plays a role. Ultimately it’s all about choices. The big ones, the little ones…Well, by now you know my shtick.

So Dylan and I are dating. I think it’s funny that his last name is my mother’s first name. It’s such a feminine name and he’s such a tough guy—there’s something cool about the dichotomy of it. There are lots of cool things about Dylan Grace. Anyway, we go to the movies, go out to dinner, visit museums…but most of all we talk.

“All that time, watching you,” he said during our first official date dinner. “That was the thing that drove me crazy, that we couldn’t have a conversation.”

He pretends he doesn’t know everything about me, and we stay up all night trying to find out if we have anything in common, other than our obsession with Max, and a knack for getting into mortal danger and high drama. And I don’t think I have to tell you, the sex is white hot.

I was thinking about how nice it all was between us, as we walked up Fifth Avenue after doing some gallery hopping in SoHo. I think he thought most of the art we saw was pretty awful, though he didn’t say anything. We’d cut through Washington Square and were passing Eighth Street, sipping hot chocolate from Dean & Deluca cups. I caught my reflection in a storefront window. I’d been to the John Dellaria Salon earlier in the week and had my hair dyed back close to my natural color, but it was still short and spiky. I’d kind of started to like it like that, though I guessed I’d probably let it grow out eventually. As I was looking at myself, I caught another reflection: a thin man in a long overcoat, across the street, resting his weight upon a cane.

I turned to look at him. A stranger. Not Max.

This happens a lot and I suppose it will continue to, though I know he’ll never come looking for me again. He’s with me. He’ll always be with me. In my darkest fantasy, I thought I could rid myself of him, but I know now that had I done that, he would have haunted me day and night as long as I lived.

As it is, there are things that still bother me; I’ll never understand some of the things that have happened. I don’t think I’ll ever fully remember my voyage on the plane, or how I got from the Cloisters to that plane in the first place. The passport in my bag was a fake; mine was waiting undisturbed in its file when I got home. And all that cash in my bag? That wasn’t mine, either. Looking on the bright side, at least I got some cool new clothes out of the deal.

“What are you thinking about?” Dylan asked as we waited at the light. I guess I’d been quiet for a while.

We usually avoided talking about Max. Neither of us brought up Potter’s Field—how we didn’t get what we were looking for that night, and we never would.

“I was wondering if you ever felt robbed. Like you didn’t get the justice you were seeking for your parents, for the women Max murdered. He got away. Does it hurt you? Do you think about it?”

He shook his head. “He didn’t get away.”

I looked at him, wondered if he knew something I didn’t. I couldn’t see his eyes behind the thin sunglasses he wore. He tossed his empty cup in a wire trash basket.

“I have come to believe that we carry our deeds with us. The evil he’s done must eat at him like a cancer. One day it will consume him.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. I thought of my conversation with Nick Smiley.

He wasn’t sorry, Nick had told me. I could tell by the way he looked at me. He was so sad-faced for everyone else. But when we were alone, he turned those eyes on me and I knew. He killed his mother, accused and then testified against his father. Effectively, he killed them both. And I don’t think he lost a night’s sleep over it.

“I’m not talking about remorse,” said Dylan, reading the doubt on my face. “I’m saying that justice is more organic than a trial and punishment. Karma, you know?”

I nodded. I wasn’t going to argue with him. If he’d found a way to make peace with the fact that the man who killed his parents was at large and probably living pretty well, I wasn’t going to try to talk him out of it. He was clearly a more evolved person than I.

I won’t lie to you; I have lost some sleep over the fact that Max got away, that his appetites probably haven’t diminished. If anything, I imagine exile has made him more ravenous. I’m sure you were hoping for a neater package—the villain is caught and brought to justice. I live happily ever after. Wouldn’t it be great if we could change all the people and circumstances that pain us? But, of course, that’s not always the way life works. Sometimes things are as they are, no matter how you struggle against them. The real challenge is making peace with that, making the best of it, and moving forward, even if that means, as it does in my case, that you’ll always be looking over your shoulder.

I tossed my own cup into the trash and Dylan took my hand. We walked in heavy silence toward the Flatiron Building.

“What about you?” he asked, lifting up his sunglasses and resting them on top of his head. He turned those gray eyes on me. “Is that how you feel, Ridley? Do you feel robbed?”

I thought about it a second, remembered that last sight of Max as he lifted away in his helicopter, the note he’d left for me. I’d always have to wonder where he was, if he was watching me somehow.

“Not robbed,” I said. “Haunted.”

I saw that my answer made him feel sad. He put his arm around me and squeezed me close as we walked the rest of the way home.

I’ve spent a lot of time cataloging all the mistakes I’ve made. I’m sure you’ll agree that the list is long and colorful. But I think my biggest folly was believing that I could bring Max home. I’ll forgive myself for that one. Because there was something I didn’t understand until the moment I saw him disappear: In death, the ghost is already home.

Acknowledgments

It might be true that writers work in isolation. But the work I do would surely stay behind closed doors without the network of believers and supporters I am so blessed to have in my life. I’ll list them here with a glowing catalog of their many qualities:

My husband, Jeffrey, has heard me give the same talks and answer the same questions for years—and not just at home. I have yet to appear at a bookstore, conference, or writers’ or readers’ group without my husband in the audience. And, frankly, that’s the least of what he does. He’s the best husband, friend, publicist, reader, event coordinator, and—most recently—the best father I have ever known. And he cooks! I thank my lucky stars every day for him.

My agent, Elaine Markson, and her assistant, Gary Johnson, are positively my lifeline in this business. From the time I was signed on at the Elaine Markson Literary Agency almost seven years ago, Elaine has been my first reader, my champion, and my friend. Gary keeps me organized, keeps me laughing, and keeps me up on all the industry gossip. Every year I try to think of something new to say, but the unchanging truth is this: I’d be lost without him.

If I could build a shrine to my editor, Sally Kim, and worship at it, I would. Seriously. The author-editor relationship is so delicate, so crucial. Authors are such quirky, fragile people; in the wrong hands they can be bruised and demoralized. In the right hands, they grow and get better at their craft. Sally has the loveliest way of guiding without pushing, suggesting without dictating, making me a better writer, and letting me think it was all my doing. She’s a co-conspirator, therapist, champion, and friend.

A publisher like Crown/Shaye Areheart Books is every writer’s dream. I can’t imagine a more wonderful, supportive, and loving home. My heartfelt thanks to Jenny Frost, Shaye Areheart, Tina Constable, Philip Patrick, Jill Flaxman, Whitney Cookman, Jacqui LeBow, Kim Shannon, Kira Stevens, Roseann Warren, Tara Gilbride, Christine Aronson, Linda Kaplan, Karin Schulze, and Kate Kennedy…to name just a few. Every one of these people has brought their unique skills and talents to bear on my work and I can’t thank them enough.

Special Agent Paul Bouffard understands the way I think. We are of one mind. He is my source for all things legal and illegal. With his vast experience in federal law enforcement, he is a wealth of information, a wellspring of details and thrilling anecdotes that never cease to capture my imagination, a tireless sounding board, and along with his wife, Wendy, a great friend.

My family and friends cheer me through the great days and drag me through the bad ones. My mom and dad, Virginia and Joseph Miscione (aka Team Houston), are tireless promoters and cheerleaders. At every store I visited in Houston, a clerk or manager said to me, “Oh, yeah! Your mom was in here moving your books to the front table!” My brother, Joe Miscione, takes pictures with his cell phone whenever he sees my books in stores and e-mails them to me. My friend Heather Mikesell has read every word I have written since we met almost thirteen years ago. I count on her insights—and her eagle-eye editing. My oldest friends, Marion Chartoff and Tara Popick, each offer their own special brand of wisdom, support, and humor. I am grateful to them for more reasons than I can count here.

About the Author

LISA UNGER is the author of Beautiful Lies, a New York Times bestseller and International Book-of-the-Month Selection. She lives in Florida with her husband and daughter. Visit her at www.lisaunger.com