Now You See Her - Michael Ledwidge [56]
I hadn’t even gotten down to Key West, and already I was playing a game of hide-and-seek, with my life as the prize.
Maybe I was just being paranoid, I thought, scanning the passing faces beyond the plateglass window. Couldn’t it have been somebody who just looked like Peter? I was heading down to Key West now, after all. Peter was certainly at the forefront of my mind, not to mention embedded in my subconscious. Maybe my overstressed brain had jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Then again, maybe not!
I needed to act. I looked across Lexington. I could actually see my town car, idling outside my office building. I quickly fumbled open my bag. I took out the card that the driver, a very pleasant West Indian man who called himself Mr. Ken, had given me.
“Hi, um, Mr. Ken?” I said. “This is Nina Bloom. Were you able to get my package from my office?”
“It’s right here in the front seat beside me,” he said.
“Great. Do you see the Starbucks on the west side of Lex in front of you? I’m right here by the window. Would you come over and get me?”
“On my way,” he said.
“Thanks, Mr. Ken,” I said to him in person when I bolted across the sidewalk and dove into the car ten seconds later. And thank God for cell phones, I thought.
I locked the door before I scrunched down low in the seat.
Mr. Ken raised an eyebrow at me in the rearview mirror.
“Did you forget your coffee, Ms. Bloom?” he said in his lilting accent.
“Oh, I already drank it, thanks,” I lied, glancing out the window, panicked. “If we could head out to JFK now, Mr. Ken, that would be really great.”
I scrunched down even farther in the seat. I didn’t breathe again until Mr. Ken hit the gas.
Chapter 70
ON THE CORNER of 42nd Street and Lexington, Peter stood scanning faces. He looked frantically up the unbelievably crowded street in front of Grand Central. Nothing. No ivory jacket. Not across the street or anywhere. He’d screwed up. His rat had found her hole.
What a bust! He’d had her, and then he’d lost her again.
As he stood there fuming, a memory bubbled up. It was of his first and only bow hunting trip with his dad in New Hampshire when he was seven. He was in the forest taking a leak when an enormous black bear appeared ten feet in front of him. Before he could yell out, there was a thwap from his dad’s compound bow, and the shaft of an arrow popped out of one of the bear’s eyes. The animal dropped like a tipped-over piece of furniture.
His father climbed down from the blind and knelt over the fallen monster, inhaling loudly as he wafted the blood aroma into his face like a chef over a pot. Peter had almost wet himself when his dad suddenly grabbed him and shoved his face down toward the blood-splattered bear until they were nose to black-and-bloody nose.
“This life, you either get the bear,” the crazy drunken bastard had said in his French Canadian accent, “or the bear gets you. Your choice, yes?”
Exactly, Peter thought.
At least he knew Jeanine lived in New York City, knew that she worked somewhere around here. Hell, knowing that she was still alive was enough. Catching up with her wasn’t an if anymore, it was a when.
His phone rang. He glanced at the screen. His wife, Vicki.
Horns honked as he stared up at the endless windows, his rage cooling now, replaced by his hunter’s natural, cold patience.
“Don’t worry, I’m going to get that bear somehow, Pop,” Peter said as he lifted his phone. “Always have. Always will.”
Book Four
THE PRODIGAL WIFE RETURNS
Chapter 71
I DIDN’T KNOW what time it was when I woke with a start, spilling Justin Harris’s court transcripts.
The plane that I was now on was a tiny fifty-seater. I’d had an hour layover in Atlanta before getting on the disconcertingly small aircraft.
After I put Harris’s folder away, I looked out the tiny window, wondering how close we were. There was nothing but water underneath us now, as silver and bright as tinfoil under the harsh Southern sunlight.
As I was staring at the light, the butterflies in my stomach